Every Allsite.ai feature in your Civil 3D model (roads, lots, grade breaks, pipes, structures, ponds and so on) carries its design values in Extended Data: a lot's maximum grade, a road's design speed, a pipe's minimum cover. Most of those values start life as a project setting in Allsite.ai. This article explains where they come from, how to change them for one feature or for the whole project, and how the Settings Report shows you where your model differs from your project's settings. It applies to Level AI, Service AI and Layout Assist alike.
Where your project's defaults come from
When a project is created, its settings are inherited from a template project or from a nearby existing project. The Create Project wizard lists your organisation's templates first, then the closest projects, and you can take every setting group from one project or pick individual groups (for example retaining wall settings) from different ones. See Create a New Project and Create a Template Project.
From then on the settings belong to your project. Change them on the project's settings page in Allsite.ai (see Edit Project Settings), or from Civil 3D: the Settings button on the Level AI, Service AI and Layout Assist ribbon panels opens the same page in the Allsite.ai Settings palette.
Changing a project setting changes the default for features created or converted from then on. Features already in the drawing keep the values they hold, which is what the Settings Report is for.
How settings become feature values
When you create or convert an Allsite.ai feature in Civil 3D, its Extended Data is filled in from the project's settings. A new road takes the longitudinal grades, crossfall and carriageway widths for its road type from Road Settings; a new lot takes its grades and dimensions from the Lot Settings; a new pipe or structure takes its placement, cover and clearance from the servicing settings. Some values are then derived from others on the same feature: a lot's front, side and rear yard grades default to the lot's maximum grade, and a road's maximum lot depth derives from the lot product it carries.
Not every field has an Allsite.ai setting behind it. Some defaults are packaged with the Allsite.ai extension itself. The Settings Report calls these packaged defaults, and there is nothing in Allsite.ai to change for them; if you want a different value, change it on the features.
Customising a feature
Project settings are a starting point, not a rule. To change a value on one feature, select it and edit the field on the Extended Data tab of the Civil 3D Properties palette. To change many features at once, select them by property and bulk edit, as described in Select Objects By Property Dataset and Bulk Edit.
A value that differs from what the project's settings would have given the feature is an override. Overriding is normal and usually deliberate: a steeper grade on one awkward lot, a wider carriageway on a collector road. Level AI and Service AI always use the value on the feature, not the project setting, so the report exists to make overrides visible, not to correct them.
What happens when a setting changes
Every Level AI Prepare, Service AI Prepare and Layout Assist run starts by syncing that tool's latest settings from Allsite.ai into the drawing, so the run itself always uses current values. Features already in the drawing keep the values they hold.
If a setting that features take their defaults from has changed since the drawing last synced, Prepare pauses to ask. The dialog names the settings that changed and offers two answers:
Yes opens the Settings Report, filtered to the fields fed by those settings, and stops the run. Tick the fields that should follow the new defaults, press Apply defaults, then run Prepare again.
No carries on with the features as they are. The question is not asked again until another setting changes.
The Settings Report
After every Level AI Prepare or Run, Service AI Prepare or Run, and Layout Assist run, the run's card in the Allsite AI Assistant carries a Settings Report section. The card's summary says how many values differ from the project's default settings, and the section lists, for each feature class, how many features differ and which field accounts for most of it. Its Open Settings Report button opens the Settings Report pane. When everything matches, the card says so and there is nothing to open.
You can open the pane at any time with the command ALLSITEOVERRIDESREPORT. Like the other Allsite.ai palettes it can be docked, pinned or set to auto-hide, and Civil 3D remembers where you left it.
Reading the report
Header. Which drawing the report describes and when its data was extracted. Refresh re-reads any missing or stale drawing data and rebuilds the report.
Headline. How many values differ, or Everything matches. The line beneath splits the count into departures from your Allsite.ai settings and departures from packaged defaults.
Filters. Only what differs from my Allsite.ai settings hides the packaged-default rows, which are the ones you cannot change in Allsite.ai. Also show classes that match lists the feature classes that were checked and found clean. Each filter says beneath it how many rows it is hiding, so an empty list never means nothing was found. A third filter, Only fields fed by the settings that just changed, appears when the pane was opened from the settings-changed prompt above.
Feature classes. One group per class, headed by how many of its features hold something other than the default (Roads · 9 of 18 features). A stale badge means that class has been edited since the data was extracted; press Refresh for a current answer.
Fields. One line per overridden field: a tick box, the field's name, how many features differ, then the value those features hold (amber) and the project default they would otherwise have (green). A field set to several different values lists them (25 mph, 30 mph). Hover a row for the full comparison and where the default came from, for example Allsite.ai · Road_Settings.DefaultCarriagewayWidth or Packaged default.
Blue bar and link. A blue bar at the left of a row means its default comes from a setting in Allsite.ai, and the ↗ at the far right opens the Settings palette on that exact setting. A grey bar means a packaged default.
Select and zoom. Tick one or more fields and press it to select the features that hold a different value and zoom to them. It changes nothing, so use it to see which features are involved before applying anything. Run it from model space, not a layout tab.
Apply defaults to N ticked fields. Writes the project default back onto every feature of that class that differs, for the ticked fields only. A confirmation lists each field, the default it will write and how many features it touches, and names any values that cannot be changed and will be left alone.
Status line. Reports what the last action did, for example Selected 8 features (11 values) for 2 fields on Roads, and zoomed to them, or how many values were applied.
Apply defaults writes to the drawing and Undo will not take it back. Nothing reaches the file until you save, so closing without saving discards it. If you are applying a large batch, save or back up the drawing first, and use Select and zoom to look before you apply.
What the report compares, and what it does not
It reads the data extracted by the last Prepare, Run or Refresh in this Civil 3D session, so it always agrees with what that run saw. After restarting Civil 3D the pane says Nothing to compare yet until you run Prepare or press Refresh.
Identity fields, values a run writes as its output, and fields that are set per feature by design (status, type, subnet, snap direction) are not compared; they have no standard to depart from.
An empty field is never an override. Numbers are compared at the precision the field displays, so 8.00 against 8 is not a difference.
Applying a default to a field that other fields derive from (a lot's maximum grade, for example) can leave the derived fields holding the old value. The status line tells you when that has happened; tick those fields and apply again.
A good habit: after the first Prepare on a drawing that was converted from existing CAD, open the Settings Report with the Allsite.ai filter on. Anything listed there is a value your model holds that is not your organisation's standard, which is exactly the list worth a glance before the run.