Stormwater Dying?

[fcernst]

Have the Civil 3D stormwater programs been left to die on the vine? 

Nothing innovative has been done with them the past few years for us subscribers, and now months of conspicuously unanswered questions in the stomwater forum.

[Cadguru42]

---

@fcernst wrote:

Have the Civil 3D stormwater programs been left to die on the vine? 

Nothing innovative has been done with them the past few years for us subscribers, and now months of conspicuously unanswered questions in the stomwater forum.

---

Autodesk is too busy working on cloud crap than core features.

[neilyj666]

That was going to be my response but you beat me too it.....:) it'll likely roll out as an Add on to a 360 service or Infraworks.......

[ralstogj]

My 2 cents

Can not write it, so you buy it, whoever wrote it or owned it stays for 12 months and moves on or retires.

No one left to fight for further funding or champion the  program. Program dies a slow death. The end 

[JoelW7]

Have come to realize it never had much of a life to begin with.  We recently purchased an openroads license from Bentley and we were amazed at how far behind Autodesk is in terms of drainage software.  You can tell in Civil 3D drainage is an afterthought and an add on due to the fact a user has to  import/export pipe networks to use the analysis software.  You have to use two programs to do drainage: pipe networks as one and the analysis software as another.   In Bentley they have the drainage analysis software straight within the program which integrates everything into one. 

[neilyj666]

Seems to me that Autodesk just see $$$$$ and buy a software company rather than developing a solution themselves then have the job of integrating into the main products; just need to look at the various ways of sharing data between the Design Suite products e.g. dwg/dxf/sdf/fbx and Map doesn't talk directly to Civil 3D and neither talk to vanilla AutoCAD....:(

[AllenJessup]

At one point Autodesk had announced that it had no intention of adding any storm water functionality to Civil 3D. They said that it was better handled with 3rd party software. Then Bently added Haestead Methods so Autodesk bought a stormwater program to "compete". As others have mentioned. I don't think there ever was anything budgeted for developing the program.

Allen

[Cadguru42]

---

@ralstogj wrote:

My 2 cents

Can not write it, so you buy it, whoever wrote it or owned it stays for 12 months and moves on or retires.

No one left to fight for further funding or champion the  program. Program dies a slow death. The end 

---

That's almost exactly what happened with 3ds Max. After Autodesk bought Discreet the original creators of 3ds Max stayed for about 10 years. Then they left. Since then barely anything has been added to 3ds Max and what does happen is so full of bugs that long time users switched to other modeling and rendering programs.

I think that's also what's happened to Civil 3D. Once a new feature is added, that's it. It's forgotten after that. Autodesk barely even bothers to fix bugs, let alone enhance existing features that's been in C3D for 10 years. Just look at pipe and structure tables. They're useless since you can't customize the tables to look how you want them, or the fact that an alignment label cannot read both spiral and curve information in the same label. C3D is supposed to be a BIM, where the information stored in the model can be analyzed, but basic interaction between C3D objects or even within the same object is not possible. Why can't a point have station - offset information as part of the point properties and are dynamic? Why can't assemblies use feature lines or 3d polylines as baselines? Why can't two alignments with profiles that intersect be dynamic without having to use an intersection object? Why have pipe networks been forgotten for five years? The QTO is useless since it can't even do real volumes and is entirely cumbersome to use. The intersection object is neat, but in the real world how many intersections have nice T or + intersections? When two side streets don't meet at exactly the same point, the intersection object is useless. 

[fcernst]

Then Bently added Haestead Methods so Autodesk bought a stormwater program to "compete".

I bought Hydraflow Storm Sewers and Hydrographs from Intellisolve back in 2003 for $199. I already was using StormCAD, but wanted to evaluate since it was so inexpensive. I found that Storm Sewers simply uses the HEC 22 approximate method, and that I couldn't use it for final design. It is still the same today.

Though today, the inlet control calculation is still Confirmed Defective.

Though we didn't have a working storm sewer network analysis option, we arguably had more functional capability when the stormwater calculators resided within the Autodesk LDD modeling environment and we could pick inverts, lengths and areas for the calculators directly within Model space..

[AllenJessup]

---

@fcernst wrote:

Though we didn't have a working storm sewer network analysis option, we arguably had more functional capability when the stormwater calculators resided within the Autodesk LDD modeling environment and we could pick inverts, lengths and areas for the calculators directly within Model space..

---

One irony about this is that Dave C. Arnold was negotiating with Haestead to include the software in Softdesk. Unfortunately Arnold and Haestead were both such A type personalities they couldn't come to an agreement. Things might be much different if that had happened.

Allen

[AllenJessup]

Autodesk has agreements not to immediately include features that it's 3rd party developers have created. Many of the types of links you mention are included in 3rd party software. While I know that we feel that since we pay a high price for Civil 3D it should include everything. But the people who write the 3rd party software don't want to see the features they've spent their time developing appear in the next release of Civil 3D either.

Allen

[KirkNoonan]

Makes sense in most cases, but SSA is a retail re-packaging of open source software. 

http://www.epa.gov/nrmrl/wswrd/wq/models/swmm/

[AllenJessup]

---

@kirknoonan wrote:

Makes sense in most cases, but SSA is a retail re-packaging of open source software. 

---

I was referring to engtech's comments about dynamic linking of points to Civil 3D objects. I'm not sure memory serves but I thought Autodesk acquired Intelisolve to start and then some utilities from BOSS for Storm, Sewer and River analysis. I'm not sure which one the current storm package is based on.

Allen

[Cadguru42]

---

@AllenJessup wrote:

Autodesk has agreements not to immediately include features that it's 3rd party developers have created. Many of the types of links you mention are included in 3rd party software. While I know that we feel that since we pay a high price for Civil 3D it should include everything. But the people who write the 3rd party software don't want to see the features they've spent their time developing appear in the next release of Civil 3D either.

Allen

---

That's just a cheap cop-out for Autodesk to not develop its software anymore. Why does Autodesk think it's OK to ignore features and make its subscribers pay 3rd parties for support that the competing platforms, such as Bentley, have included with their packages at no more cost? What about the vehicle tracking software that Autodesk now has? Doesn't that compete with AutoTURN? It's also not good business to rely on 3rd party developers who may or may not stick around and keep developing their addons for newer versions of AutoCAD and/or C3D. The SincPac is great, but we don't use it because it's a 3rd party addon that costs even more in time, money, and no way of knowing if it will be kept up to date. So far it is, but for how long?

[AllenJessup]

Since Sincpac survived Sinc's passing. I think it's there for the long haul. Autodesk has agreements with it's registered developers on how long the developer can expect return on their work before Autodesk will introduce competing features. That's not forever. Just a period of time.

Allen

[ctbailey]

Sinc passed away?

[Jeff_M]

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/AutoCAD-Civil-3D-General/Forum-contributor-in-need-help-of-a-different...

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/AutoCAD-Civil-3D-General/Forum-contributor-in-need-help-of-a-different...

[AllenJessup]

Unfortunately yes. In December 2012 - http://www.obitsforlife.co.uk/obituary/646744/Sincovec-Richard.php

Allen

[ctbailey]

Thanks guys, I have obviously been absent from the forum for a long time.  Sinc always was a great resource.

[tcorey]

---

@ctbailey wrote:

.... Sinc always was a great resource.

---

Amen, brother.

As far as contribution to the Autodesk discussion communities, Sinc was right up there with Dean Sadallah (I know I butchered the spelling, Dean, sorry) Jeff Mishler and Travis Nave. I still kudo any post of his I run across, just as a tribute.

Tim