I'm a civil engineering student in New York state. I have used Autocad and ArcMaps (GIS software) in the past. I"m new to Maps but I want to use it for my senior design project. We're designing a road in the Adirondacks and I really just want a simple way to grab some topo data and import it into Maps to then learn how I'm going to design our road. We need a few cross-sections, but not many. If I could design this in Maps It should be easy. Also, a respective employer I'm looking into uses Maps for site design, so I would want to become familiar with it that way also. I'm pretty good at figuring stuff out myself, but if I just had a way to get the topo data into some sort of 3D map (I assume that's not too hard) I could go from there. How should I go about this?
"Maps" = ? ArcMap ; Autodesk Map3D ? or something else?
Get online and find the contours shp for the area probably from a state GIS site