Importing Google Earth Images and Surfaces into Civil 3D

Have you ever played with the Google Earth commands which allow you to bring in a image and a surface of what you have zoomed into on google earth? Well let me fill you in with the problem I know you have (or at least I have experienced). First and foremost it is very neat that Autodesk and Google go together good, however the first problem I have with one of them is that when I go to import an image it shows up as black & white. B&W? Really? I'm sure that will change with future releases. The second and most perplexing problem is when you try to import a surface into Civil 3D it starts good and hangs up around 50% everytime. The solution I have found that works is to install a older version of Google Earth. Try a version around 5.2 or so.

I will put a link to a older version here for you in a day or so.

Plot Style Files (Where are they?)

In the past releases it has always been a hide and seek approach to finding where the plot styles are located. Each release and operating system has them buried under numerous folders.

Here is a simple technique to circumvent the situation. Type "Stylesmanager" in the command line and a new explorer window opens in the exact location of your plot styles.

Quick Access Toolbar

I know this may be simple to some, but another question I get asked a lot is "Where is my Pull Down Menu Bar?" The answer is in the top left corner where a little pull down arrow is located in the tool bar (which is the quick access toolbar"). Pull down the arrow and select show menu bar.

Another tip is to add any favorite command that you use regularly. You add the command to the quick access toolbar by right clicking on your command of choice and selecting the "add to quick access toolbar".

Block Editor and Edit Block in Place

It's amazing to me that people still don't use the block editor or edit block in place commands. Say you have a drawing open that you have inserted a block that you use as a symbol and you want to change the color or layer, before you had to open the actual block drawing and make the changes and then save and reinsert the block.
Now if you launch edit block in place it opens the block inside your current drawing with all of the editing features. You can change whatever you want and it will update all blocks in your drawing without having to do anything other than save changes to your edit.