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Watercad and Civil 3D

6 REPLIES 6
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Message 1 of 7
sfore
7822 Views, 6 Replies

Watercad and Civil 3D

We have an engineer that uses Watercad for waterline jobs.  I think it runs with their Civil 3D installation.  I'm not exactly sure how it's intertwined.  They don't use Civil 3D or know the first thing about it.  I'm evaluating license seats and need.

 

Do they really need Civil 3D to run Watercad or will Watercad run on plain Autocad and still achieve what is needed?

6 REPLIES 6
Message 2 of 7
entropist
in reply to: sfore

Watercad (or watergems - be wary of the small differences for acad integration) can work as a stand-alone program or with autocad or civil3d. Personally I don't like working in the stand-alone version, little things like inserting an aerial background are harder without some version of acad.

 

Bentley's programs are limited as to which autodesk versions (year) they will connect to, so be sure to check version compatibility. I am currently running autocad 2013 with both sewercad and watergems integrated, but have another workstation in my office using civil 2012 with the same modeling programs. Hope this helps.

Message 3 of 7
sfore
in reply to: entropist

A lot of times, our Watercad user simply performs a 'save-as' of my Civil 3D Design drawing to run her Watercad Model and analysis.  She needs to see the Aerial Photo and contour elevations (while hovering).  Will she still be able to see these items if she had Watercad running on plain Autocad and/or a Stand-a-lone Watercad installation?  Keep in mind, she never brings in Aerials or Lidar data to create surfaces.  She relies on us to setup everything and then she just views everything from her 'save-as' version.

Message 4 of 7
entropist
in reply to: sfore

Within the acad interface, watercad would rely on acad to support the aerial, contours, etc. So if the civil data you need is visible in autocad, it will be visible while building a model in that file also.

 

Watercad does support aerial images directly, although it does not seem to be able to read the supporting goereference files. It also does not support some of the newer image file types (ex: jp2). Another thing to keep in mind is that watercad does not handle large aerials as well as acad - it may give an out of memory error due to images.

Message 5 of 7
sfore
in reply to: entropist

Your reference to acad is plain Autocad and not Civil 3D, correct?

Message 6 of 7
entropist
in reply to: sfore

Yes, I had intended plain autocad when I wrote that. Although after re-reading, that first sentence would apply to either civil or autocad.

Message 7 of 7
www.j699
in reply to: sfore

thanks alot

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