General question about creating a site plan

[chris.mckinzie]

I have a question about what software would be best to use in creating a site plan.  We are looking at doing this for my company's campus headquarters.  We have about 300 acres and 20 or so buildings so I'm not looking at creating an entire city, just our site and maybe a little bit of the surrounding area.  Initially we are just looking for a 3D graphical representation of the campus.  We currently have 2D plans of the general campus layout and buildings.  Down the road we could be asked to start tracking underground utilities and such (we currently have GPS coordinates for all underground utilities).  I would like something that has a pretty good photorealistic look because some upper management may see this.

Based on my research, it appears that there are at least three different softwares that may be good candidates.  Civil 3D, Map 3D, and Infrastructure Modeler.  We currently have Infrastructure Modeler, but not Civil 3D or Map 3D.  I started the process in Infrastructure Modeler, but am just wondering if it is the best option.  It seems a little bit limited to me.  Maybe I just don't know it well enough yet.

Any suggestions?

[Joe-Bouza]

It sounds to me like you are more interested in A rendering  application than a design package that steamlines and dynamically coordinates the drafted annotation. I no nothing about rendering although I know c3d can do it but Im more impressed with the design tools than the pretty picture

[andrewpuller3811]

With Autodesk software, from my experience, I would think Map 3d and Infrastructure modeler in tandem would be the way to go, unless you have an existing GIS software to work with you utility information.

Map 3d is good with GIS and can also be used to draw up your building plans, (you might struggle getting the 3d part out of it, but infrastructure modeller is able to create 3d objects from 2d GIS information), although they won't be in a building format that infrastructure modeller will recognise, as far as I know.

Have a look at some of the videos on map and infrastructure modeller to see how they can be used.

There may be other software out there that would suit your needs, but I think this is what will work if you go with autodesk.