Create a data reference

00:05

So now that we've created our data references, what we're going to go ahead do in this blank file is that,

00:10

we're going to take those data references and bring them into this drawing file to work with.

00:16

So in order to do that, what you need to do is you need to navigate to the Prospector tab of the Toolspace,

00:21

go down to your Data Shortcuts and expand out the objects that you want to bring into the drawing.

00:27

So for the beginning, what I'm going to go ahead and do is I'm going to bring in my EG surface,

00:33

I'm going to right click on it and I'm going to create a reference.

00:38

There is also an option for opening the source drawing, which will open the drawing that this file is based out of which you can see here,

00:46

the source file name is 034, or I can promote it.

00:51

If you promote this data reference into your drawing, you are effectively bringing that data into the drawing,

00:58

and so you're not creating a link, you're actually bringing all that data into this drawing so it can be modified and deleted.

01:05

If you create a reference, you are only linked to the reference in the file and so you're not editing that surface, you're just using that surface.

01:16

So I'm going to go ahead and create a reference.

01:19

I'm going to leave the name as EG, and the description the same, and the style the same because if we wanted to, we could change these later.

01:27

So I'm going to click "OK".

01:28

As you can see, I have this surface here that I can select.

01:33

And if you notice, I can look at the surfaces, I can edit the surface style.

01:39

I can check the surface properties.

01:43

I can do conversions to a DREF status.

01:46

I can do analysis on it, but there's no option in this contextual ribbon bar for me to edit this surface.

01:52

If I was to right click on that surface and click Promote, now when I selected surface, I have all the options for adding data, editing the surface.

02:02

And so I have effectively brought this data into the drawing rather than just referenced this data into the drawing.

02:08

So I'm going to go ahead and delete this.

02:10

I'm going to right click and create another reference.

02:13

And you can do the same thing with anything else you've created a data shortcut for.

02:20

So I can go ahead and go to my Dev-Align.

02:23

I can right click on that and I can click Create Reference.

02:27

And then I can leave all of this as the default options, click "OK", and you'll notice that my alignment comes in.

02:36

If I wanted to bring in my corridor, I could scroll down to my Corridor here, expand out, go to my Dev-Cor, right click, Create Reference.

02:46

Leave all these options the same, click "OK".

02:49

And so what Civil 3D is telling me, it says that the corridor is out of date, please make sure to rebuild it to keep the data consistent.

02:57

I've brought in the data and so now what I have here is I have the corridor here.

03:04

The warning that I got was a warning that this corridor may have been out of date in the source drawing.

03:09

And so this might not be the most reliable data that is being brought in here.

03:14

But as you can see, all of this data is in the drawing, it's not editable, but it is usable for creating new objects off of.