Units - International Feet and US Survey Feet

 Bizarro world remains for the software company. When you add features should you expect everyone to change their behavior? What do you do with legacy drawings? Should the software company actually make sure their own features work with the new feature? 

If you are Autodesk that is a resounding NO! Ignore the new feature and wonder why users are complaining. 

In this case the software providers have provided support for "Feet" (which was the only option for decades) and then added an option for "US Survey Feet". Unfortunately, if you export to IFC Civil 3D doesn't read the drawing units. The feature defaults to "International Feet" instead of "US Survey Feet". 

You can see that in line 13 of the output files (note yours might be different). That the conversion factor from feet to meters is set to "Internation Feet" instead of using the appropriate factor. 

To fix this you can modify the text files with the desired value of conversion. In this case the desired value should be 39.37 inches per meter or 0.3048006096012192

 

Then when you import the file into another drawing, as long as it reads the factor, it should import in at the desired location instead of being scaled incorrectly. 

I haven't tested Civil 3D 2025, but Map 3D also has issues recognizing "US Survey Feet" for most of the commands in Civil 3D 2024 and prior drawings. These were reported to Autodesk, but like most bugs I don't think they cared to fix them. As bugs to be fixed are bugs to be ignored.

The help file indicates it supports US Survey Feet, but I'm not seeing that in practice on the export. 

Digicert Click-to-sign tool setup

 I forgot to remember how to set up DigiCert Click-to-sign tool setup. So here is the dialog box filled out with the working values. 

The pkcs11properties.cfg is a small file. 

name=signingmanager 

library="C:\Program Files\DigiCert\DigiCert Keylocker Tools\smpkcs11.dll"

slotListIndex=0

 Go here to the KeyLocker workflow:

Then go through the Get Started workflow.

Set the paths to the to Keylocker tools and the SignTool.exe, or one can do it from the System Environment dialog box in Windows 11.

set PATH=%path%;"C:\Program Files\DigiCert\DigiCert Keylocker Tools"

set PATH=%path%;"C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\bin\10.0.22621.0\x64"

set PATH=%path%;"C:\Program Files\Java\jdk-23\bin"

The Keylocker Windows Clients Installer:

Once complete: 

Here is the command line stuff: 

If you use the command line options, it appears one has to restart the computer for the changes to be accepted.

PropWPF Code Snippet

 Steps to add a code snippet in Visual Studio for use as adding a WPF property. 

Go to Tools, Code Snippets Manager

Select the desired language

Click on the Visual C# folder to see the existing snippets. 

Copy the propfull.snippet to the My Code Snippets location and rename it to the desired shortcut. In my case propwpf.snippet.

Modify the snippet to the desired format: 

In this case this is the snippet text: 

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>

<CodeSnippets  xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/2005/CodeSnippet">

<CodeSnippet Format="1.0.0">

<Header>

<Title>propWpf</Title>

<Shortcut>propWpf</Shortcut>

<Description>Code snippet for property and backing field</Description>

<Author>Microsoft Corporation</Author>

<SnippetTypes>

<SnippetType>Expansion</SnippetType>

</SnippetTypes>

</Header>

<Snippet>

<Declarations>

<Literal>

<ID>type</ID>

<ToolTip>Property type</ToolTip>

<Default>int</Default>

</Literal>

<Literal>

<ID>property</ID>

<ToolTip>Property name</ToolTip>

<Default>MyProperty</Default>

</Literal>

<Literal>

<ID>field</ID>

<ToolTip>The variable backing this property</ToolTip>

<Default>myVar</Default>

</Literal>

</Declarations>

<Code Language="csharp"><![CDATA[private $type$ $field$;

public $type$ $property$

{

get { return $field$;}

set { SetProperty(ref $field$, value);}

}

$end$]]>

</Code>

</Snippet>

</CodeSnippet>

</CodeSnippets>

Trimble Access Development

• Ask for access from Trimble and install Trimble Installation Manager and include the API
• Add Android path to the "PATH" system environment. The path should be checked to make sure it is correct. This will make it so the code will compile. It might be a setting I missed, but if Visual Studio indicates it can't find something, then add the path to the file locations. 
  C:\Microsoft\AndroidNDK64\android-ndk-r16b\toolchains\arm-linux-androideabi-4.9\prebuilt\windows-x86_64\bin\
• Modify Visual Studio for Android and Windows development for c++ if it doesn't already exists. 
• If the install is on a server, install Wireless LAN from the Server Manager program, You know this is required if starting Trimble Access emulator says it can't find the "WLANAPI.dll" file. 
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mq6xhtiZeKM&t
• If you make a mistake, make sure to clean and then rebuild. Otherwise, it will not copy all of the files properly. 
• If there are copy file errors, then change the post build event to use "ByPass" instead of "unrestricted"

powershell -executionpolicy ByPass -file "$(ProjectDir)CreateTimXml.ps1" -outfile "$(OutDir)$(TargetName).timxml" -lib "$(TargetFileName)" $(TimXmlProperties)

• You might need to restart your computer and/or restart Visual Studio to get the projects to build and possibly clean the project and then build the code. Stuff appears to get cached which prevents things from working correctly using c++.

Trimble Access - X

 The Trimble Access SDK really sets one up for success in making you fully aware that there are other languages spoken than English. They set up all of their sample code to to have XCodes which are used to translate any string to the appropriate language.

Unfortunately, the SDK documents have not been updated and some of the sample code solutions do not contain the required *XCodes.h files. This post explains how to create them. 

The first step is to find the location of the TransitApp.exe folder. In my case it is in this folder: 

"C:\Program Files\Trimble\Trimble Survey Core API v23.10\Tools\TransItApp.exe"

In the same folder is a file called "ApiLanguageTool.exe". The "ApiLanguageTool.exe" allows you to run a command line prompt to process the file. I'm not a big fan of command line tools, so I probably don't know all of the tricks. Here are my steps.

• Go to the start menu and type cmd and select the Command 
  
  
• Type cd and paste the path of the exe location. This makes it so the command line can find the program.

• You can then type ApiLanguageTool.exe ? to see what options are available. 
  
  
  
  
• This will let you know the format the program is looking for. 
• Then paste in the information. In this case, I'm creating the XCodes for the HowToSample solution. 
  
  
  
  
  
• I didn't include the .h, but I should have to the XCodes name. The program will then process the tdb file and place it in the desired location. In my case, I needed to go back and make the change.

It does appear one should be able to run the "TransitApp.exe" directly and get a UI, but on my computer it was failing.