Best practices for HEC-RAS 2D modeling with AutoCAD Civil 3D

I've had enough experience now using AutoCAD Civil 3D and HEC-RAS for 2D flow modeling in Maricopa County Arizona to share a list of best practices. It's only a small beginning, but it's something. Enjoy.

How to export a shapefile from AutoCAD or Civil 3D

Somebody wants a shapefile and you are an AutoCAD user or a Civil 3D user. How can you give them a shapefile? It's pretty easy. And it requires nothing but AutoCAD (assuming you have the ADESETCRDSYS and MAPEXPORT commands available). But you need to learn a few new tricks and terms.

HEC-RAS 2D Land Cover from AutoCAD

I had a bit of trouble getting a Land Cover map from AutoCAD to HEC-RAS today. I made a map, but HEC-RAS kept telling me the file "has 0 features". It turns out I needed to set the project projection to the projection exported from AutoCAD with the Land Cover map.

Automated AutoCAD GIS export to Maricopa County DDMSW hydrology

I have finished the first version of the open source work-flow optimized application at AutoCAD Wiki.  It works like this:

Label Object Data in AutoCAD objects imported from GIS

If you are careful about how you MAPIMPORT GIS shape files into AutoCAD, they will come in with Object Data from their GIS data.  This object data can be seen in the AutoCAD Properties palette.  Here is a quick LISP routine I wrote to label objects with the data that is attached to them.

Making GIS shape files with data from AutoCAD to import as maps to Maricopa County DDMSW

We AutoCAD people are going to make the GIS files that Maricopa County DDMSW needs so we don't have to risk our time and our reputation by typing our data into DDMSW.  And we are going to do it from our usual AutoCAD work space. 2017 Update: Open source helper here.

Create a Shape File With Data For GIS From AutoCAD

AutoCAD users know how to create geometric objects.  And we know how to label them.  But how do you attach data to those objects to export together in a shapefile  for use in GIS?  You can do it if you can put your drawing on a public coordinate system and you have AutoCAD Map.  And you don't have to become a GIS expert or even learn a new interface.