Overview

As much as we'd love to see the whole world move to a Civil 3D model with real coordinates so we could all just share data without pause, it's simply not going to happen this year. In land development, we work with a large number of team partners on most projects. This can include architects, contractors, other civil engineers, planners, and landscape architects on a small job. On a large job, the number of people on this list could double or triple. An important part of being a good team member is sharing data cleanly. In this chapter, we'll look at importing Land Desktop and LandXML data and exporting data in drawing and LandXML formats.

In this chapter, you'll learn to:

• Discern the design elements in a LandXML data file

• Import a Land Desktop project

• Import a LandXML file to create a surface, alignments, and profiles

• Create an AutoCAD drawing that can be read without special enablers

What Is LandXML?

For years, there was the humble text file. These files were the lingua franca of written documents and data input. We still use text files for many tasks, in spite of the evolution of Microsoft Word DOC files, PDFs, and other common written formats. The problems occur when you try to send your Word document to someone running OpenOffice or WordPerfect. Formatting falls apart, font information is lost, and paragraphs don't justify like they should. Bring in the simple text file and stylize again! The idea is that...