What's new in this release is covered in three sections of this topic:
AutoCAD Utility Design 2017 contains the following enhancements.
In many cases a duct exiting a structure will follow a straight path for a given distance before a transition is begun where it shifts to the trench layout. To model this, four new rule points are added to define the distance of auto-transition point where structure layout switches to trench layout:
These values will be applied to all the segments in the drawing. They can also be edited in the Transition Points or Feature Info palette for an individual segment. For more information, see To Edit 3D Geometry with the Transition Points Palette and To Edit 3D Geometry with the Line Sections Palette.
With the new Ports tab on the Feature Info palette, the port assignment of a duct on structures and in segments can be edited in 3D view. All the available ports are listed in the drop-down list. When the mouse hovers over a port list item, the port is highlighted in the 3D view, and after a one-second delay, the duct will show a 3D preview of the geometry change. If the port assignment is selected, the 3D geometry of the duct will be updated.
With the new Line Sections palette, the 3D geometry of a duct can be edited by defining explicit straight and arc sections:
The AUDCLEARANCE command supports checking clearance for underground lines.
Custom feature classes of point, line and polygon type can be digitized by the commands of AUDLINEFEATURE and AUDPOINTFEATURE, Model Viewer and Feature Library.
Editing of custom feature class objects is now supported by most editing commands such as STRETCH, MOVE, ROTATE, and TRIM.
Changes to custom features extracted from a GIS data source can be merged back to the data source.
Hard split is supported by merge back. If an extracted line is hard split to two lines in Utility Design, the two lines will be merged back and the original line will be removed from data source.
Data round-trip for line features with soft split points is supported.
An option "Existing Connected Point Status Change" is added in Utility Design Options/General Layout for Data Exchange. If the status of a line feature is changed to "existing (modified)", the status of its connected point features (including soft split points) will be automatically changed to "existing (modified)" if they are extracted from data source and with status "existing". This is to make sure if a line with soft split points is extracted, and then is soft split or hard split, the connectivity between the line and the existing soft split points will be maintained after merging back.
The changes to containment of lines will be merged back to data source.
When a feature with "removal" status is merged back, it will be removed from the data source, as well as its connectivity and containment relationships.
The AUDINDUSTRYMODELEXPORT3D command outputs a .sqlite file with FDO metadata and geometry column data exposing 3D geometry which can then be directly accessed in InfraWorks via an FDO data source to allow proper stylization and display of the 3D geometry.
The AUDSURFACEIMX command provides the ability to import an .imx file and create a corresponding Civil 3D surface, allowing a terrain to be exported from InfraWorks and then imported for use in the design. To use the command the drawing must have Civil 3D settings defined. Such a drawing can be created by using the INSERT command to insert a Civil template into a Utility Design drawing.
Four new rule points have been added in Pole Attachments rules:
Leveling will respect the rules when setting the attachment height of the topmost pole head or device. This allows topmost pole heads or devices to be leveled below the absolute top of the pole either by manually specifying the distance or via clearance rules and standards.
The "Device to Ground Clearance" rule point is added which will be evaluated by Leveling to ensure all devices are placed high enough to maintain standard clearances above the ground level. This can ensure devices are always leveled to a minimum clearance and initial attachment height, avoiding the need to manually set an initial height in such cases.
When the top attachment is higher than the pole's height, it reported a notice with two resolutions: move down attachments, or raise the pole height. The "raise the pole height" resolution was the default one used by auto-resolve. Now an option "Raise Pole by Default" is added in the Structural Layout in Utility Design Options. When it's true, the default resolution will be to raise the pole height and then result in a bigger pole model, to meet the clearance requirement; otherwise, the default resolution will be to move down all attachments and keep the pole height unchanged. If false, the attachments will also be lowered by default when the pole model is changed to a smaller pole.
If Auto Resolve is disabled, a pole's Pole Height Above Ground is reduced and attachments moved down, an alert was shown indicating the pole's Max Height Above Ground was bigger than the pole's height. This alert has now been changed to a message, so it can be ignored, and the pole effectively assigned a greater burial depth.
The pole head "Has Hot Wire" property will now evaluate as "True" when the "Conductor Type" is either primary, secondary, service, or streetlight in cases where the conductor's Phase has not been specified (null, "tbd", or "unknown"). Previously, the property would always evaluate as "False" if the phase was not specified.
A context menu "Associate Feature" is added on Material Editor to associate a manually added material item with a feature in the design.
In Material Item rules, the aggregate "values from features" functions can be used and will list "Contained Materials" property. With this function, the Cost values of Parent material items can be set to a sum of their child material costs where the child material cost itself is set by rules.
Performance of sweep sizing with large number of sweep models has been improved.
Performance of Overhead Engineering analysis has been improved when many sag scenarios or catenaries exist and the drawing contains a Civil 3D model.
Selecting a feature class in the Industry Model Configuration dialog will display much faster for configurations that contain extensive data model customization with large numbers of custom attributes.
The AUDPROFILE command supports creating profiles for underground lines and structures. Selecting an underground segment will add all directly contained ducts and conductors to the generated profile.
A new prompt is added in AUDPROFILE command to specify the additional distance to extend the auto-generated alignment beyond the end points of the selected segments.
The profile style name settings for Wire, Pole, and Underground lines (Duct, Conductor, etc.) allow overriding via rule Text Expressions. If a Text Expression is defined for the corresponding feature class with a name matching the style name specified in the Civil Settings, that rule will be used as the style name for the profile. If not specified, the style name in Civil settings will be used.
When specifying the second point for offset, an option "Distance" is added, which allows the entry of a distance value. Then the new features will be placed in the direction of the user's cursor with this offset distance.
The AUDEXPANDEDIT command allows offsetting lines individually by selecting a segment or a schematic line. If a segment is selected, it will list all the contained lines and prompt to select one to expand. Two offset modes, "Distance" and "Snap", are provided. "Distance" mode allows any offset distance, and "Span" mode only allows snapping to increments of the distance. The default mode is "Snap" and the default interval is 1. The interval can be changed with the "SetInterval" option in the command or the "Default Expand Interval" option in Utility Design Options/General Layout. If the offset distance is specified as 0, the line will be collapsed to the segment.
When adding lines with command AUDSCHEMATICTOSEGMENT or AUDSCHEMATICTODUCT, an option "Offset" is provided to offset from the segment or duct rather than directly digitizing.
Two new options are added for the command AUDEXPAND. The option "Restore" will restore the schematic lines to the custom state before AUDCOLLAPSE. And the option "Reset" will clear the stored custom schematic geometry, collapse the line, and expand it again.
The option "Reset" in AUDCOLLAPSE will clear the stored custom schematic geometry and collapse the line.
For each analysis setting, a custom list of attributes can now be specified to ensure that changes to those attributes will trigger the execution of the corresponding analysis. The list can be specified in the Analysis Settings in Utility Design Options. For most analysis types, the list will be appended to an existing internal list of attributes. By default, General Validation, Sizing and Material analysis will run when changes are made to any attribute, so specifying a list for those types of analysis will change the behavior to only run those analysis types when the specified attributes are changed. Specifying an attribute list for those analysis types should only be done when a full list of attributes can be specified for a particular feature class. Any attributes specified in rules used by those analysis types should be listed.
When validation starts, the cursor changes to waiting status and the progress bar shows immediately.
An option "Automatically select meshed voltage drop analysis" is added in "Utility Design Options/Electric Layout". When true by default, as in prior releases, the system will automatically switch to use meshed voltage drop analysis when any of these conditions are present:
When false, the system will always use Radial analysis by default, and never automatically switch to meshed analysis.
When the option is false and radial voltage drop can't handle the network, it will notify users that meshed voltage drop should be used.
The alert of "Conductor size of child should not be larger than that of parent" has been changed to a notice so it can be ignored.
A new attribute "Work Location Name" is added for each feature class, which will show the name of the associated work location.
AutoCAD Utility Design 2017 resolves the following issues.
Projection Length showed "NaN" in the Transition Point palette.
Switching to 3D might fail to turn off 2D layers if any block in the drawing just contains ports but no other entities.
Ducts were not shown as connected to ports in 3D view in drawing templates with metric units.
Connectivity tooltip didn't show and connecting didn't work if there is an empty block in the drawing.
Digitize failed if the data model contains a custom feature class with a domain attribute.
Remaining Moment Direction was shown as "Undefined" on the Analysis Result palette when it's 0.
Importing buck pole heads failed due to duplicated ports not being allowed.
Tapping rather than connecting should happen for schematic lines with Geometric Proximity mode.
When using an intermediate structure to tap an overhead conductor, its height was not properly set and the wire fell onto the ground with it.
The "Pole Required Height" property in pole sizing rule doesn't do unit conversion for the values from pole top clearance rules.
The material item might not be added or removed properly while revalidating if multiple items of the same CU were added for one feature.
An extra deadend pole head was created after merging two single circuit pole heads to one double circuit pole head.
Pole head connecting might report an exception when it failed to merge two pole heads into one.
Labels were not generated based on the label set for each profile line in the profile view.
The New Job dialog was not resizable, so sometimes the labels couldn't be fully shown.
The features digitized after publishing a layout would be lost.
The section index in the alert message didn't align with the section index in analysis results.
The AUDREPLACE command might cause crash if selecting the same point as the base point and the second point for offset.
Using a "not" operator in the filter of an aggregate function might cause the rule to fail.
The "Set attribute" function didn't work for API attributes like Guy Lead Length.
Sag reported an exception when wires were not connected to pole heads or intermediate structures.
Tapping a 3-phase overhead line with an intermediate structure might create an extra trace in the "Overhead Engineering" result.
Sag might report the alert of runaway sag after tapping the overhead line with an intermediate structure.
If the style block of a point feature used a annotative block, highlighting the feature or changing its attributes in Feature Info palette might lead to crash.
If a style block was regenerated by style change or by AUDREGEN command, the hyperlink that set in the block property might be cleared.
Selecting a material item row in Material Editor turned off the LWDISPLAY variable (for displaying lineweight).
Ignoring a message of "Cannot validate due to blocking errors" might lead to that the blocking error disappeared.
Voltage Drop converted an overhead conductor's Conductor Length attribute to be in feet even though it's configured in meter in metric templates.
Meshed voltage drop included neutral conductors in its network and might size them to secondary conductors. Now neutral conductors are excluded from voltage drop.
A crash might occur at launch if the drawing contains an invalid block.
A new plot layout might be removed after running AUDPURGE and reopening the drawing.
Utility Design 2017 contains the following changes to the default template settings and rules.