The onscreen nature of the Civil Geometry interface greatly reduces the need for dialogs. One use for dialogs is to determine what prompts are offered at the cursor. Example, if you use Arc Between Elements and turn off the options for transitions and tapers, you will not be asked for their values in the cursor prompt, and transitions and tapers will not be created.

Dialog Customization

This can be taken one step further by customizing the dialogs for various commonly used entries. The customized dialog entries can be saved DGN Libraries. Example, using the Arc Between Points tool, you might routinely need to create two different kinds of cul-de-sacs, one with a radius of 40 and one with a radius of 50.

Right-click on the dialog and choose Customize.

This opens the customize utility.

Use the customize utility to set the Placement method to Center, Radius and hide it from the dialog, lock the radius value at 50, and hide all the other parameters.

In the image the status column for Arc Length was clicked to choose the Hide option.

For the radius, the value of 50 was entered and the click in status was set to Prompt at Cursor with Locked Value.

Click the Save button to save the custom settings.

The dialog for this customized tool shows only radius, and the only required inputs are to pick the center, start, and end points.

Save As

When you click the Save As button on the dialog customize settings, you can save the customized dialog to a DGN Library.

You can also use a custom name on the customized tool to create another custom tool with a 40 radius and then, in the DGNLIB, have a custom CulDeSac group in the Task Navigator from which you can choose the 40 radius or 50 radius.