Inquiring about Civil 3D - can I use it??

[tzframpton]

Too all my fellow CadTutor.net guru's - I have a question for those of you who know me on here..... Could I pick up Civil 3D easily given my general AutoCAD knowledge?? The reason I ask is this....

 

My best friend, who is in excavation and civil work, has been doing it for years and is highly knowledgeable in this field. He recently opened up his business name and account and now is doing work on the side with a partner. He is the most mechanically inclined individual I've ever met, he can build anything, fix anything, and run any piece of equipment. I am just the same but on the computer end.... we are just the opposites but you put us together in a work environment and we could be unstoppable. Anyways back to the point... he knows my skill in CAD design and I do side work for him already when he needs CAD prints done. The things I've done has been all architecturally related. He's now asked me if I could ever create a civil plan for his side business. He has shown me some full set of prints before while drinking and cooking out at his house when we get on the subject and obviously I know what I'm looking at and know how to read a print because its what I do for a living, but I have zero idea of how to create what I see - like, I have no clue at all how to make the contours and calculate grade slopes and all that.

 

My question is could I do it with vanilla CAD or would I need to use a trade specific app like C3D? He told me if I needed it he would get his partner to buy a licensed copy for me to use when they needed. My other question is would it be very hard for me to pick up civil drafting using C3D coming from a mechanical background and using MEP?? Does it even work like MEP at all?? Obviously he would be teaching me things along the way about what I need to know in the civil field, and I would basically be drawing what he tells me to draw, but I don't even know how to get the contours of ground layout - do I get that from the city or another geographical organization or how would I get the information into CAD??

 

Sorry for all the Q's... I told him I would get on here and ask to give him a better answer. Thanks in advance for anyone who can provide some info.

[Tiger]

Speaking from someone that graduated as a Building engineer and since then have only worked with district heating (pipes in ground) - you'll pick it up. You have the basics already as a engineer, you have more than enough knowledge with CAD, and if you can use MEP I really see nothing stopping you with C3D.

 

As for if you can do it in Vanilla, depends on what you need done. I collaborate with waste-water/water engineers and they have just made the move from AutoCAD to C3D, so it can be done in Vanilla, but perhaps not to the (3D)extent that C3D does.

[eldon]

I am sure that you would have a better start than most, but you need to understand the technical terms used in the programme.

 

Whilst I have never used Civil 3D, I have dabbled with Softdesk and Land Desktop for volumes for dig and fill. My greatest problem was in understanding the terms, because they were written in a foreign language for me - American.

 

I would never try and do ground volumes in Vanilla. I think that you would have quite a learning curve, but at least you speak the correct language

[Dana W]

 

I would never try and do ground volumes in Vanilla. I think that you would have quite a learning curve, but at least you speak the correct language

 

I have tried 2D civil plats with LT. Don't. It's like picking fleas off a horse with tweezers under a deadline. It took me better part of a day to get the compass directions on the properties sheet to NOT be bassakwards. Let C3D do the gruntwork.

 

I have done drafting work for my Father-in-law who is a surveyor for the past 10 years, and I still need a translator.

[CyberAngel]

Over the past 2 1/2 years I've been trying to learn Civil 3D. Before that I used LDD, and before that vanilla AutoCAD for 16 years. I even have a degree in computer science, so I know my way around a piece of software. Civil 3D, though, is one of the most infuriating programs I've ever seen.

 

A qualification: I have had zero formal training in Civil 3D. Everything I know has come from books, from the online help, or from trial and error. You are not going to pick this up in a weekend. Civil 3D is not AutoCAD, it is a set of tools built on top of AutoCAD. You should get some real training from technical people, not sales people, and you should have a tech support arrangement so that you can ask questions and get detailed answers. There is a very steep learning curve.

 

On the plus side, most of the engineering side of civil is common sense: water flows downhill, every new contour has to tie off to an existing contour, that sort of thing. You don't have to unlearn anything about Land Desktop, the previous civil tool set for AutoCAD. And once you learn Civil 3D, you'll be amazed at how much grunt work it will save you. Imagine being able to draw a profile and having it update itself automatically whenever you change the surface or the alignment.

 

I don't know anything about MEP, but I doubt there's anything that will carry over to Civil 3D.

 

So if you make the leap to Civil 3D, understand what you're getting yourself into. You need training and lots of it.

[tzframpton]

Thank you for your response... this was pretty much the type of comment I was assuming.

Civil 3D is not AutoCAD, it is a set of tools built on top of AutoCAD.

This is exactly how AutoCAD MEP works. It's a set of tools built on top of the AutoCAD core.

And once you learn Civil 3D, you'll be amazed at how much grunt work it will save you. Imagine being able to draw a profile and having it update itself automatically whenever you change the surface or the alignment.

Once again, just like AutoCAD MEP.

 

Any and all questions I have will be directed specifically to this forum, 100%. Me and my friend are still discussing everything now about how all this is gonna go. Very interesting stuff, that's for sure.

[CJJ]

You might also consider getting Civil (not Civil 3D) because this has a lot of the same functionality. Civil 3D can do everything that Civil can, plus a little more.

 

Some of the key differences are that 3D comes with Hydraflow software for stormwater simulation, has more functionality for GIS and mapping, and costs more. If you need the geospatial and stormwater functionality, you should get 3D. Otherwise, it might be a little overkill.

 

Check this link out:

http://images.autodesk.com/flashassets/products09/civil/microsite/shell.html

[tzframpton]

You might also consider getting Civil (not Civil 3D) because this has a lot of the same functionality. Civil 3D can do everything that Civil can, plus a little more.

 

Some of the key differences are that 3D comes with Hydraflow software for stormwater simulation, has more functionality for GIS and mapping, and costs more. If you need the geospatial and stormwater functionality, you should get 3D. Otherwise, it might be a little overkill.

 

Check this link out:

http://images.autodesk.com/flashassets/products09/civil/microsite/shell.html

Thanks for the link, I'll consult with my friend to see exactly what he needs (for now). I didn't know there were different versions. This is exactly why I love message boards.

[sinc]

Autodesk Civil no longer exists. It was an option for the 2009 and 2010 releases, but no longer exists for the 2011 release.

 

Evidently, most people thought the same as me - the functionality breakdown of Civil didn't make any sense. Autodesk seemed to be targeting Surveyors, but by removing all the Map functionality, they removed some of the most useful tools for Surveyors. So Civil was a product without a market.

[CJJ]

You could probably do a lot of the work with Vanilla CAD, but Civil/Civil 3D will be extremely useful if you're going to be modeling the surfaces.

 

You'll be able to take the surveyed points and generate your existing surface, then model your proposed surface and get accurate numbers for your earthwork, which is one of the main concerns with site planning. This alone makes it pretty indispensable.

 

It makes doing profiles a breeze and takes out all of the guess work there, too. While this can be done with basic AutoCAD or LT, it's going to take you a whole lot longer and require a whole lot more work on your part. It will go ahead and draw your existing and proposed surfaces, so your drawings will be exactly as accurate as your survey. If you're going to be doing a lot of projects, the time you save in your first week or two will justify the cost of the software.

 

Another wonderful thing about the civil design software (huge improvement from the old LDD days) is that your surfaces, profiles, alignments, etc. are all automatically updated to reflect changes. This means if you move an alignment in plan view, the profiles are updated automatically. If you change grading in the surface, your profiles will reflect this change without any more work on your part. If you get new survey data and import it into your surface, you don't have to recalculate everything on your own. This saves a lot of time and reduces places for you to make errors.

 

Obviously this is only scratching the surface (pun intended) of what the software can do. If you're only going to be giving plan views of layouts and not doing any proposed grading, then you can probably get by with "vanilla" AutoCAD or LT, or you can even do it with MEP. If you're doing in-depth grading and creating profile views of your utilities, then you'll definately want to get Civil. If you're also going to be simulating the stormwater runoff and designing huge networks of storm drains, then you might want to go all out and get Civil 3D.

 

Hope that at least points you in the right direction of what software to research.

[CJJ]

Autodesk Civil no longer exists. It was an option for the 2009 and 2010 releases, but no longer exists for the 2011 release..

 

I didn't realize that they had phased this out. A year or two ago, my company did away with a lot of our Civil 3D network licenses and switched to Civil standalone licenses for most of our employees to save money, and kept a few networked Civil 3D and Map 3D licenses for the folks who needed the extended functionality. To be honest, most of our engineers never even noticed that there was any difference between Civil and Civil 3D. They get by just fine with Civil, and then load up 3D only when they need it.