Respond to Changes Faster with Project Explorer

TODD ROGERS: Welcome to Respond to Changes Faster using Project Explorer. My name is Todd Rogers. I am the BIM Manager at Walter P. Moore.

And this class is going to take you through the whole interface of Project Explorer. We're going to be looking at a lot of aspects and how to speed up your production time. So first off, we've got the Safe Harbor Statement. I'm sure y'all have seen this all day long so far, so I won't stay here very long. I'll skip on to the next.

And just a little bit about myself. I have two boys. I got one 22-year-old, I got one 10-year-old, as you can see over here on the right. My wife is actually a professional football player. You can see her there at the center top. I have a dog named Harley, which is next to her, and a puppy named Luna, which is next to them.

So I am an Autodesk Expert Elite. I am the Treasurer on the Board of Directors for AUGI. I'm also the Editor-in-Chief for AUGIWorld Magazine, and I am an extreme Harley Davidson fanatic, as you can see. I've got five of them sitting in my garage right now.

So having said that, we'll move on to the next slide. And this slide, basically, is going to tell you there's no more PowerPoints beyond this slide. I'm like the Bartels Brothers for Autodesk. I'm not a big PowerPoint guy. I like to get down into the trenches and start getting to business, so let's just do that.

So I'm going to jump over to Civil 3D. And speaking of the Bartels Brothers, they have supplied me with this wonderful data set that I will be going through this lesson with you with. So I've spent 29 years in the industry so I've been around quite a while.

I've been at Walter P. Moore for about, I would say, five years in March so getting my five year mark coming up pretty soon. Make sure you guys download the handout. It's pretty much step-by-step. And I'm actually going to be going through my own handout through this lesson, that way, we don't leave anything out. We don't make any mistakes.

So Project Explorer's actually a modeless dialog box that runs inside Civil 3D. So what is a modeless dialog box? A dialog box is referred to modeless if the user does not have to close it in order to work through the application. You move it around, you can move it from screen to screen, and such and so forth.

So to open Project Explorer in 2021 when it was released, you can click on the Add Ins tab, right? So up here in the Add Ins tab is where you will find Project Explorer in 2021. However, in 2022.1, I believe, and 2023 versions, which I'm using, they have moved Project Explorer over here on the ribbon to-- right beside our palettes, right? So it's very convenient right there.

So I'm going to open it up. So I'm going to pick on it, and this opens up the modeless dialog box. So you can see at the top we have corresponding numbers for each of these, right?

So if I hover over here, you can see these are our alignments. So it tells me I have three alignments. I have one assembly, I have one corridor three point groups, two surfaces, and so on, right? So the numbers represent how many of those objects are actually in the drawing.

So when you click on any of these tabs, you'll see three windows, OK? The top window shows a preview of the object that is selected in the window below it. So you can see here selecting it here that object shows up in this window here. So the name of these is, obviously, the preview area, and then we have the object level area, and then we have the subobject level area.

So similar to when you click on an assembly, and you right click and go to the subassembly properties, you'll get these values here where you can change inside there. Well, you can do it right here within this dialog box very quickly and very efficiently. So you can see when I click on the Alignment tab, I have the Tartans drive here so I'm going to click on that Tartans drive.

And notice there are some things that are purple in nature, and some are black. So we'll go over that a little bit later down the road. But when I click on it here, you can see that I get a little preview of what's going on here.

Now, under it, you'll see that there is the EG profile and the FG profile, which is associated with that alignment. So it's right there for you highlighted up here in the Preview area. So very nice little feature there.

So the alignments tab houses the alignments and the profiles. So don't forget that. So when you select the Tartans drive alignment, notice you have a series of tabs in the subobject area. So you've got calculated stations, you have alignment entities, you have the PIs, and even if you have super elevation on the alignment, it would show up here, as well.

So most linear items are set to an increment. So notice that increments here are set to 10. I can change that increment to 50, if I want to, and then it'll show my alignment increments in 50. And change it to one, if I want to. And quick as can be, it's in one increments, right? Even the curves have their own increments, as well as spirals.

So if you highlight an object in Project Explorer and hit the Control key, you'll notice it will highlight the drawing area. So, for example, if I highlight Tartans drive and I hit my Control key, notice over here that it highlights. Now, I do have my little control thing for noticing things trying to get you to focus on stuff. I know it's an old school teaching thing, but do notice that that alignment highlights out there. You see how it's highlighting? So that's very important, especially, when we're coming to feature lines and working with the feature line.

So now I want to click on the corridors tab. So we go over to the corridors tab, looks like a road. Now, if I go down to Tartans drive, notice that Project Explorer highlights objects differently, and there's a warning symbol, or a possible violation, right?

So it's telling me if I hover over it, that the corridor definition is out of date. So you'll see the warning symbol, and the text is in red. You can also hover over it and it'll tell you that.

So instead of going into your tool space and doing this, doing that, you can simply right click on this from here and rebuild the corridor. And just like that, it's fixed. So all that can be done right here within Project Explorer, as well.

So also notice when you click on the corridor, you can see the cross section in the preview, right? So for corridors, you have the station pull down. You can go backwards or forwards through the station by clicking corresponding arrows beside the station. And that is up here.

Notice where it's station 40? I can go station 50, and so on. I can go to the end, jumps to the very end of the alignment, or I can jump to the very beginning of the alignment. I can also pull this down and select from the list to get that to show up like that.

So if you place your cursor in the preview window here and press Control, it'll highlight in the drawing area where the assembly insertion is. So notice there, you see it highlighting over here where that station is? So, again, I'm hovering over here hitting the Control key, and it'll show you where that station is. Very nice.

So we're going to explore some of the right click functionality available corridors. The right click menu will change, depending on when and where you right click. For example, the right click menus are very different, depending on which area you pick in, right?

So, again, Tartans drive, you've got all these options here for your corridors. You can set descriptions, you can set your styles, your code set styles, you can set to rebuild automatically, if you want-- never recommend that, though. Notice going down here, I've got different options. So I can do things like quick reports, which we'll get into later on in the lesson.

So we also have keyboard shortcuts within Project Explorer. So we're going to go to the partials tab. So let's run over to the partials tab. You'll see I've got 49 parcels in the drawing.

And there are only two areas for parcels, right? There's no preview area. Why would you need to see a preview of a partial, right? So it's pretty simple.

You don't have the preview available for these for the simple fact is you got it right here, right? So if I needed to look at a partial, I can simply highlight it here and hit the Z button, and it zooms to that partial, right? It's very simple. I can go here, hit the Z button, and it zooms to that partial. Pretty simple.

All right. So this feature does not work with every object so keep that in mind. There are certain objects that it does not work with. So-- however, it does work for the majority of them so you're good for the most part.

So also note that you can only Zoom to individual objects, but you can also Zoom to components of that object, as well. For example, this line, I can hit Zoom, it zooms into that actual line. Pretty cool.

So another one, if you want to select an item in the model, you select that object in project-- excuse me-- in Project Explorer and tap the letter S. So, for example, if we go to property 48 here, I hit the Z key to Zoom into it. Now, if I hit S, notice it highlights it and selects it up there, selects the whole partial.

So most people know how do you select the partial? You select a partial by selecting its label, right, not the partial itself. Select a partial by selecting its label. It's a lot easier to come here, hit Z to Zoom into that, and then S to select it. Super fast.

So if you want to see the properties of that object, then you got two options. You can hit the E key, or the A key. So I want to hit the E key, and it shows-- takes me straight to the properties of that partial. I want to hit Cancel, this time we want to hit the A key. But let's make sure we highlight it and then hit A. Oh, there it goes, pops right up. Pretty simple.

So E or A, and they're pretty close together. So luckily, all this is on your left-hand side of the keyboard. So all these options are also available in the right click menu. So, for example right clicking, you can Zoom to like so, and you can also select like so. But what's easier to me would be simply hitting those hotkeys on the keyboard.

So the next thing we're going to go over is editing objects within Project Explorer. So with Project Explorer interface, it is much easier and more efficient to edit Civil 3D data, as I've been showing you. So we'll now cover how to edit this data through the Project Explorer interface.

So we're going to go to the alignments tab. And notice there are some black texts and some purple texts, like I mentioned earlier. So anything that's purple is an editable item, right? So it's as simple as clicking it, double clicking it, and there I could rename it to anything I want, right?

So I could say, OK, this is North St Street, right? So if I click that, it renames it. Now, does that rename it everywhere? Absolutely, it does. Because if I go over to my tool space and I look at this alignment and we go to refresh, that was the EG that I renamed.

So let's go look at that. So it's under North Street and profiles. See, renames it already just like that. Pretty interesting.

All right. So double click on Tartans drive, and I'm going to do that. So if I double click on it, there again, I could name that to just Tartans. Click OK, and there it names it there.

Just to double check, make sure that I'm telling you the truth-- there you go. It renames it. Pretty simple.

So what if you wanted to edit more than one object at a time, can you do that? Absolutely, you can do that. So we're going to Zoom in to the profile view.

So we're going to go to Tartans, and we're going to click here, and we're going to click here. We're going to right click and set profile styles. Wow, look at that, it changed both of those at one time. I can change them both to a design profile if I wanted. Boom, it's done, both are using the design profile.

And we'll go look at that down here. And, looky there, they're both using the design profile. Pretty neat. So very simple, very quick, very efficient.

So let's look at modifying the corridor. So we'll go to the corridor tab, and we're going to change the distance from the back of curb to the edge of sidewalk. So how do we do that?

We come down here and we click on the corridor. And we can come down and look at the options that we have here. We got the corridor feature lines, as you can see. Let me make this just a smidge bigger. There we go.

So there you can see we got start ending stations, we got everything about these corridor feature lines. It's pretty doggone neat. So going back over to the corridor baseline here, clicking on these, again, give you different options when you're clicking on different things, right? So notice this portion is grayed out now because you can't edit that portion as you can this hierarchy here.

So we're going to click the-- so if we're going to modify that, we're going to go over to the assemblies tab, right, because that's where you change the width of the road, or width of the sidewalk, or the inside boulevard width. It's things of that nature. So we're going to change the back of curb to the edge of the sidewalk. We're going to change that distance.

So that distance here would be-- got left and right, you also have your values here for your pavement depths and all that, right? So keep mind of that. So here you have your urban sidewalk.

You click that, it gives you the values there. You got the curb and gutter, you got the daylight. So we could change that sidewalk width right here.

On this side, we could change it to six and click OK. Notice it changes that to six, because that is the right, because we're looking going the opposite direction, all right? So what does that do? If we come over to our corridor, look, it's out of date, right? So that tells us we need to rebuild that corridor.

So let's rebuild that corridor. And you will see that that sidewalk updated right there to six feet. So if I do a quick distance of my sidewalk, you'll see that is six feet. So I didn't use my snap, I just picked close to it. You'll see that-- pretty close there. If I snap to it, it'd been six even so-- all right.

So the good thing about this is pipe networks. There are so many utilities out there to work with pipe networks now. And all we need is Project Explorer. We don't need to spend any money.

Now, one thing I didn't mention about Project Explorer is Project Explorer is only available in the AEC collection, so keep that in mind. You can't get Civil 3D and expect to have Project Explorer. You're going to need the AEC collection to have it, OK?

So we'll take a look at our pipe networks. I'm going to click on the pipe networks tab, and you'll see here, I've got one pipe network, and that's the proposed storm. We'll zoom out some here. Excuse me.

So in the object area, I'm going to click on the only network available, which is the proposed storm sewer. So notice all of the stuff comes up here. We've got our manholes, we got the type of manhole, the style being used, northing and easting the rim, connected pipes.

And if I scroll over, there's so much information about these things. I mean, it's insane. Do you really need to see all this stuff? Absolutely not. You can simply turn those off and we'll go over that later, as well.

So notice in the preview here, it shows the whole pipe run, right? When I pick on this, it shows that whole pipe run, and it's very small. You can see those little tiny structures in there. You see those little tiny structures. Also, notice when I hit my Control key, it's highlighting over here-- notice that.

So what we want to do is we want to edit the pipe network from manhole 14 to manhole 16, so I want to change that view. So I'm going to say from manhole 14 to manhole 16. And there you have it. I got manhole 14 to manhole 16. I don't see that very, very small structures with that long pipe run now. I see the only ones that I need to fix and go about my business.

So at the bottom on the pipes tab, I want to select pipe 4 and 5 right there. As you can see, it highlights them up here in this area, as well. And I'm going to right click and I'm going to swap parts.

Now, as you know, like I just mentioned, there are tons of developed apps out there that you can purchase that do this. And we needed this a long time ago, didn't we not? So it's good to have.

So we're going to choose 24 inch pipe. So let's go up to the 24 inch pipe. And I'm going to click OK. Notice those pipes change to a 24 inch.

So next, we want to run a constant slope between these structures, right? So if they're both 24 inches, they need to be the same slope. So at the top, I'm going to click on Edit pipe run right here. This opens up another dialog box.

Now, we've got several options inside this dialog box. So the control parameters is, do you want to hold the pipe run at the starting elevation, or do you want to hold the pipe run at the ending elevation, right? We can jump over to the side here and we got set and hold pipe elevations by-- obviously, we're going to do invert.

Now, below that, we've got slope and elevation change. We can do a pipe run elevation change by putting how much of an elevation change in there. We can put the actual slope, or we could put the rise over run, right? And we can also put an elevation offset in there, as well. So if you wanted to put a 0.1, like, a little drop in there, you can do that, as well.

So what we're going to do is we're going to change this to negative 1. And if I pick in one of these, you'll see it calculates all these others automatically. And we also have the option to ignore null structures, which is super nice because it's not going to go between and go to the null structure and then go to the next, right? So it'll just ignore them and go from structure to structure. It's a nice feature.

So I'm going to click OK. Notice we are now at a constant -1% slope. Now, look at the preview area. See this? This is a bug. That is in development getting fixed, right?

So it's a known defect, so the pipe disconnects from that structure, as you can see. So to fix this, we're going to highlight manhole 14. So we're going to come to these structures and we're going to highlight-- we scroll over-- and we're going to go down to manhole 14, and 15, and 16, and I'm going to tap the letter S to select them.

So let me Zoom in to where these are. So over here, I want to hit S. Well, I've got to be back over here, do this like so, hit S. And there you can see it highlights them.

So I'm going to hold down the Shift key and make all three structured grips hot. So how do we do that? We go-- hold the Shift key down. We're going to pick this grip, we're going to pick this grip, and we're going to pick this grip. That should make those three hot.

And for the stretch point in the command line-- oh, I've got an S down here. That's why it's not making them hot. Sorry, about that. Try that, again.

So we hold the Shift key down, we make this one hot, make this one hot, and we make this one hot. And we're going to stretch, right? So now that we do this, our stretch point is going to be at zero, zero.

And there you will see that it fixed that pipe. If I go back up here to 14 to 16, you'll see we are now connected again, as you can see there. So, yeah, it's in development. It's getting fixed. Everybody knows about it. Now, you guys know about it so don't freak out when it happens.

That's a quick fix. It's a little workaround. There's other workarounds you-- might be quicker for you, but that's one that you probably might not know of. So little tip and trick in there.

So lastly, in this portion, we're going to look at comparing one or more of the civil objects to another. So I'm going to Zoom in to the upper left-hand corner of our drawing. And you can see here I've got a feature line, right? Pick it, and it tells you that is a feature line.

So we want to compare-- OK. So this feature line is actually our retaining wall. So we want to compare that retaining wall to the existing ground surface. So at the top-- so I'm going to go to feature lines, and here is my retaining wall. And here, you can see I can compare to.

So if I do a compare to, I can compare this to the existing ground surface. So if I pick that, notice down here, you'll see that compared to is showing the existing ground surface. So now, you can see the surface in the Preview area, as well. You see the surface in there now, now that we're comparing it, all right? Very good.

So we're going to change the elevation of the retaining wall. So in the feature line points at the bottom down here, we're going to double click on the point index number two-- double click that. And notice it highlights there. Now, one thing when I first started doing this, if you know when you edit a feature line, if you go into the elevation editor, you have those glyphs that show up and shows you the station of that particular node on the feature line, right? So same here.

If I hit Control, if I pick this and hit Control, it highlights where that is on there. So if I go to four, notice it highlights there. If I hold the Control key down, it stays there, right? So keep that in mind if you need-- that's how you get to those stations on your feature line.

All right. So the feature line is set at a constant elevation between the two points, right? So point index two and three, so if we do here and we right click, we can set a constant elevation, a constant grade, between feature line points holding the start, or a constant grade of the feature line points holding the end elevation. So you can do start or end elevation, and do just a constant elevation to the feature line points.

All right. So we can compare that to the alignment, too, as well. So I'm just going to hit set constant right here. We're going to set a value of 729.207. Do that right there, look at that. It put that retaining wall up there like that, so it held that constant elevation across the way there. So very nice little feature, as well.

So now, let's compare this feature line to the alignment. So let's compare it to, let's see, what is this, Fairview Streets? No, this is North Street. So we'll do the North Street alignment.

So when I'm comparing it to the North Street alignment, when I hit the Control key, it highlights here, right? Now, if I do one of my point indexes, look at that. That is cool.

It tells me that from that point, it's 36.875 feet to that alignment that I'm comparing it to. That's pretty good stuff right there. We can even do the four-- do it like so. It tells you there.

Again, it's highlighted. Zoom out a bit, and you'll see that-- look at that, super cool. So it gives you a dimension that is relative to that compared object-- quick, easy, boom, boom, boom, same dialog box doing everything, right?

So the next thing we're going to do is we're going to look at creating custom reports and tables. This is probably my favorite thing about Project Explorer because I've been back and forth creating-- let's take, for example, structures. You do a structure report back in the day, you wanted a northing and easting.

How did you go about doing that-- wasn't easy. You had to go to Excel, had to copy and paste this, do that and the other. It was a pain, right? So now, you can do any type of report, customize it any way you want, it's super cool.

So looking at that-- so we've looked at how to do this, and how to work with the data. So here, we're going to look at customizing how to generate those reports and-- reports and tables. That's right. You can create custom tables, as well.

So we're going to start by going to the alignments. So let's go to alignments tab, boom, and click on the Tartan FG down here. And in the subjunctive object view, notice the columns that we went over earlier. There's so many, right?

This is a little too many for me. So what I want to do is only show the ones that are important to me. So I want to click on the Layout button at the very bottom right here. I'm going to pick on layout.

And here, we have what to choose from, right, so the alignment profile column chooser. So here, we're going to choose alignment profile column. We're going to choose Column layout for alignment profile calculated stations right here. Notice all those are checked. We don't need all those, right?

I don't even like seeing that point index. I just don't even like it. So I'm going to take it off. I want to see the station.

Obviously, we have easting, northing, but looky here, we can say northing, move that sucker up above easting. So now we have station northing, easting elevation. We got the bearing, we got the alignment radius. I don't need to know the entity type, but we'll leave it on.

We don't need to know the gradient. We don't need to know any of this here-- point codes, all this design speeds, we don't want to see the compared to at this moment. I can hold the Shift key down and uncheck all those like so. So that is an option, as well.

You also have a lot of other options here-- your intervals, things of that nature. So if I click OK, notice that it's only showing those that I specified-- station, northing, easting, elevation, bearing, alignment radius, entity type, and subentity type. So quick and easy you can come in here.

Now, the good thing about that is I go back into layout, I can save that-- I can save that out to a file. So if I ever go and reset everything, I can go open that file back up and, boom, it's done already. I don't even need to do anything.

So lots of different customization, and it can all be saved out to files. So you might want to create a folder on your server that holds these customized things because it will reflect in your report, as well. So those can actually be saved, too, all right? So moving on.

So we've done that, so we're going to-- once again, we're going to look at the compared to. So if I go here to FG and I go to compare to, and I want to compare it to the existing ground, then I can come back into the layout, and that was the profile calculated stations. I can come down there and show the compared to, and I can show compared to station, or whatever. But we will do compared elevation.

That way, it'll show us the comparative elevation there. So if we go in here now, and you'll look there, it's compared to the EG surface. So that is the FG surface compared to the existing ground surface. So finished grade versus existing grade. And there are your elevation differences between the two-- super easy, super nice, things like that that used to take us forever to do to figure out and find the information. It's just all done right here-- so quick and easy.

All right. So now what I want to do is create a custom report. So exporting reports works similar to what we just did, right? So some of the file formats that are available, you've got HTML, PDF, CSV, Excel, Dynamic AutoCAD tables, and more. So we're going to go to the Object Sets tab at the top.

Oh, we got a different tab we're going to. That is right here, object sets. So we're clicking on object sets. So the first thing I want to do is we're going to create an AutoCAD table on our structure information.

So this is the very last tab, obviously, so it doesn't get confused with anything else. All right. So here we're going to create this collection of the pipe network, and the action is creating an AutoCAD table. So one here, which is to create a new object set, so we go here and we're going to create this new object set. So we're going to name this structure table in Model Space.

And you'll see why I'm naming that right here in a minute, OK? So structure table in Model Space, all right? Now, we got some object set action.

Now, here's where we specify what do we want this thing to do, right? So do we want to create a CSV file, a text file, a table-- what do we want to do? So, obviously, I named it Table and Model Space, right?

Well, look, we have Table and Model Space, and we also have Table in Paper Space. It's important. Why? Because paper space is one to one, and Model Space is by scale, right?

So we're going to go in Model Space. So here we got some options-- the action type. No, we never want manual changes, right? We want that sucker dynamic. We want dynamic so when the structure changes, so does the table. That's how we want it.

And we want to use the layout of Project Explorer window. We can also load a style. We'll go over that here in a minute.

We can pick the insertion point. So let's go over here and let's pick the insertion point. Where do we want this table?

Let's put that right there. So now it's picked that area. Now, you also got title cell templates so you can do all kinds of different templates here for naming. And you, also, has used the default table style for object sets, or you can create your own, or load one, right?

So I'm going to go ahead and click OK. And now we have this in here. So it didn't do anything. And why is that?

So the reason is, we have not added that action in there. So, basically, what we want to do is we want to click this button here to add/remove objects to the object set, right? Here's the object set right here.

And we have not specified the objects to add to that object set. I'm going to hit the plus symbol, and here gives us the option for those. So, obviously, it is a pipe network.

And we just check the box here. We click OK. And just like that, there is a table, boom. Again, it's using all those headers and things of that nature, right?

So we're going to look at editing some of that. We don't need to know that that's a concentric cylindrical 48 inch, blah, blah, blah, right? Unless you name yours differently and don't keep the default naming of those. All right. So we're using the layout configuration that's out of the box. You can see that by the way it looks, obviously.

All right. So we're going to double click on the object set here as takes us back to the original box, right? So I'm going to navigate to the bottle bottom under the Layout style. So here, I'm going to use a specific layout style.

But, obviously, I don't have one created so I'm going to create my own. I want to click Edit Style. So here, I can create my own. The column label, obviously, we don't need description.

We don't need objects style. I want you to notice over here, too, we got a clear all and a check all. So I usually like to clear them all and then check the ones that I want, right?

So the ones I want-- let's see here-- we want to go with structure name, but we're not on the right one here. So we need to go to, what is it, the set column layout for structures-- set column layout for structures. Where is it?

Oh, I've got to go to pipe network. That would make more sense, wouldn't it? Column layout for structures, OK. Let's clear that, and we want the structure name.

We want easting northing. Now, we want to move northing above that just like so. I want the rim, I want the connected pipes.

Don't need the connected pipes count to do reference surface, we could do the surface elevation, surface adjustments, reference alignments. We could do station and offset, very important, right? You can do rim to sump-- everything that's in the structure properties, you can turn that on here and have it in this just like so.

So we're going to go ahead and click OK for that, and it will prompt you to save this. So you have no other choice, OK? So I'm just going to save that, just call it tables and reports. And, of course, this is a structured table.

And I click Save, and there it's going to be using it so when I click OK, notice it changes over here, as well. Now, there's other things that can be changed with that. If I go back in here, you'll see that we have table styles. So if I go to Edit the style of the table itself, look at this-- I mean, just tons of stuff.

Use background colors-- we don't want that. We like the borders, though, that's for sure. Calibri, that's pretty much basic font that people use these days.

Add a title row. What is the title row? That's this thing up here. We don't need that. Why do we need that? It's kind of in the way and annoying, right? So we get rid of that.

They also have a header row, which we do want. So with that, let's go ahead and click OK. And again, it's going to ask us to save that.

So we go tables and reports, and structured table, save. Notice it's a different file format because it is a table style and not a layout style, all right? So I click OK. And notice that fixes that.

So that does not get rid of that up there. That's called something else. I can't remember the name of that thing, to be honest with you. It has something to do with one of these in here.

It's not the header row, I know, for sure. But there's a way to get rid of it, and it actually might be in this dialog box here. Maybe not, I'll figure that out later. But we're pressed on time, that's why I'm going to go ahead and go through this without figuring that out for you.

All right. So moving on, we're going to discuss the table appearance, well, with-- that's what we just did. We just went over that. One thing I do want to show you is the style. Let's go-- let's make a different report here. So let's go hit this.

Actually, let's just go here and create a new one. We'll call this structure report PDF. So that action would be a PDF. And we could use that layout we used earlier, remember, because we saved it. So what we do is we come in here, we pick, and we grab it because we saved it. That's good stuff.

And we actually did this one, as well. So we go here, desk top, tables and reports. I guess we didn't save that one because that's a different one. OK. So let's go click OK, selected objects set requires a valid report style, OK.

So we go here, use the default one. There we go. And we add the structure stuff to that, that being pipe network here, looking OK. And we hit Run the selected action, or we could run all actions.

If we had a bunch here, we could run them all at once to update them, or we could run the selected action. When I hit Run the selected action, it says here it was generated. Do you want to open this file now? Yes, I do. And that opens up Bluebeam. That is my default PDF viewer.

All right. You can do the same with HTML. So you can see here nice report. Now, it does do word wrap, so you've got to keep that in mind.

All right. Now, one thing I do want to go over with you before we get to the Q&A because we are running close to time-- I like to give about 10 minutes for Q&A-- is back in here, if I go back into a new object set, we're going to call this C3D22D. Really? Is that right? Absolutely.

Look at this. I can go down here and export to a 2D drawing file. Now, how do we do that before? Let me cancel this. How do we do that before?

We go up to output, and we run export Civil 3D drawing. And as most of you know, this thing is awful. It never seems to work right. Something crashes, you got to bind xrefs manually, even though you've got an option for it to do it itself. But there's always problems with this thing.

The command export to AutoCAD version works a little easier and a little better. However, this one is almost immediate. So this is crazy. So I'm going to say 3D22D. I want to select that action here, and we want it dynamic. I mean, I don't think it really matters.

Oh, I didn't select the right one. That's why it's asking me that because that shouldn't be available. We're just going to use the layout of Project Explorer window and, basically, we're going to come here and click OK. And we're going to run that selected action.

I've got to add the objects to it. So here, we can just select whatever we need to select. Click OK. It runs selected action. It's that fast, yes.

I'll click Open. You will then see-- it even named it up here for me. It's open.

Now, I'm working in a VDI and it's doing its little AutoSave there. So I'll Zoom extents, and you'll see there is my alignment. And if I pick on that alignment, it's lines, it's 2D line work. So that quick, boom, you're done. Pretty cool.

So with that, I would like to take a look at the preferences real quick. So we're just going to look at the preferences down here, and just to look at it, you can see here you can turn certain categories on, you can change the colors of the stuff. For example, there's that editable value, there's that purple color.

You can change that to a better color. You got different options and preferences for all this. And if you go in and change something, or you set it all up again, you can save it out. You can restore it to defaults.

Here, I can go hit the reset here, and we can reset the layout, reset the preferences. Notice now, we're actually in this drawing. So if I go back to small subdivision, notice my numbers populate back up here. I can hit this reset button, reset my layout, and reset all my preferences. Boom, just like that, everything's back to default out of the box.

So I've hope you enjoyed this journey using Project Explorer. And if you would, please, reach out to me at trogers@walterpmoore.com for future things. And I'd like to take this moment to go over some Q&A.