utodesk Labs has released another handy tool for Civil 3D, the new Subassembly C

omposer. It s basically a tool that automates the programming of custom subassemb

lies. You can download it from here. It comes in a zip file and contains both
a 32 and 64 bit version, as well as samples. The first thing that jumped out at
me as I went to install the 64bit version it is that it requires Microsoft .NET
Framework 4 and SQL Server Compact 3.5 SP2. Once the prerequisites were instal
led, installation was very straight forward and fast.
The Subassembly Composer contains is it s own interface for building subassemblies
it does not run inside of Civil 3D. The interface of the program is very simil
ar to Navisworks and the .NET interface. Note that the .NET studio is what you
would use to create subassemblies manually.
The Subassembly Composer really feels like a visual programming language, which
makes it very easy to learn. One of the downsides of this is that complicated s
ubassemblies will quickly grow to an unwieldy size.Personally, a difficult conce
pt for me to grasp at first was how to draw arrows in the between elements. Whe
n you hover your mouse over a building block, four gray rectangles will appear,
one for each side. Click and drag on one of these rectangles to connect the blo
cks.
One of the greatest advantages of the Subassembly Composer is how easy it makes
it to get your subassemblies into Civil 3D. I thought that this was the most di
fficult part of programming assemblies in .NET. With the subassembly composer,
all of your changes are saved in a .pkt file that can easily be imported into Ci
vil 3D.Note that this subassembly still needs the .dll file. When you import th
e .pkt file, it will automatically create that file for you in the proper locati
on. This means that deploying custom subassemblies company wide is not a trivia
l task. Each computer will need to have the .dll file to work.In conclusion, do
es the existence of this tool mean that you will be creating custom subassemblie
s more than you use the stock ones that we ve grown to love? My guess is that you
will not. It is a still a lot of work to create a subassembly, just much less
than programming it yourself. Can you use this tool to get you out of a jam whe
re the stock assemblies will not suffice? My feeling is that the answer is yes,
but provided that it s used wisely. Note that the tool is still in the lab , and no
t intended for use in production.