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Underwhelmed by Civil 3D 2014

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Message 1 of 100
neilyj666
3070 Views, 99 Replies

Underwhelmed by Civil 3D 2014

Anyone else a bit underwhelmed by the "new" features in Civil 3D 2014??Smiley Frustrated

 

http://www.autodesk.com/products/autodesk-autocad-civil-3d/features.type-new

 

If it has the Live Maps feature as vanilla AutoCAD does then as the maps etc can't apparently be printed this renders what could be a great feature almost useless (presumably it's a licensing thing) and don't get me started on the Geotechnical Module only being available in the Suite edition of Civil 3D.

 

Hopefully there have been a lot of changes "under the hood" that they don't boast about and now it doesn't crash using gradings and they've fixed the Quick Profile Bug etc etcSmiley Wink

 

Obvioulsy I'll need to wait until it is released before I can be more critical....

neilyj (No connection with Autodesk other than using the products in the real world)
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AEC Collection 2024 UKIE (mainly Civil 3D UKIE and IW)
Win 11 Pro x64, 1Tb Primary SSD, 1Tb Secondary SSD
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99 REPLIES 99
Message 81 of 100
O.Maille
in reply to: sfore

Civil 3D has been a product that has long flattered to deceive. If we weren't on subscription and if there was time to learn a new product i think we would. I've been using the product daily for 5 years and originally the sales pitch was that it would be a design and drawing production package all in one. The focus of development appear to have always been towards road design; really a re-write of the old Novapoint. The product always did road design relatively well and still does, however all other aspects have been poorly design and haven't been addressed.

There is still no workable pipeline design functionality and development appears to have stopped on SSA.

Recurring instability in grading tools has not been address since improvements in 2011.

Quantity take off and mass haul are still overly cumbersome and inefficient.

Flood mapping is now only premium, yet from an analysis point of view it's just a hec-ras plugin and most of the nice maps can be produced better in the free qgis.

Integration with GIS for civil objects is still terrible; why can parcels go directly to topology or at least reliably to any GIS format.

My growing impression is that there will be a revit civil or similar built from the ground up on the basis of database models rather than the outdated .dwg.

 

Message 82 of 100
Alfred.NESWADBA
in reply to: O.Maille

Hi,

 

>> My growing impression is that there will be a revit civil or similar built from the ground up

>> on the basis of database models

Already started .... >>>click<<< 😉

 

- alfred -

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Alfred NESWADBA
Ingenieur Studio HOLLAUS ... www.hollaus.at ... blog.hollaus.at ... CDay 2024
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(not an Autodesk consultant)
Message 83 of 100
neilyj666
in reply to: O.Maille

It'll all be in the cloud......

neilyj (No connection with Autodesk other than using the products in the real world)
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Win 11 Pro x64, 1Tb Primary SSD, 1Tb Secondary SSD
64Gb RAM Intel(R) Xeon(R) W-11855M CPU @ 3.2GHz
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Message 84 of 100
ksorsby
in reply to: neilyj666

I hope to God not.

Plus, from the shows I've been to, Infraworks is virtually useless as an engineering design tool.

 

Kevin

Message 85 of 100
Alfred.NESWADBA
in reply to: ksorsby

Hi,

 

>> Infraworks is virtually useless as an engineering design tool.

That's why I wrote "started"! 😉

As a conceptual tool it's great, and the more time comes (like you see in the roads and highways module) it will get closer and closer to be able to handle technical details too.

 

- alfred -

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Ingenieur Studio HOLLAUS ... www.hollaus.at ... blog.hollaus.at ... CDay 2024
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Message 86 of 100
neilyj666
in reply to: Alfred.NESWADBA

Anyone remember that Interactive Terrain shaping tool that was on Labs a year or so ago - I'd expect that to make an appearance again in Infraworks ... my preferred use of Infraworks is for flythroughs of proposals as it's much faster the 3D Max.

neilyj (No connection with Autodesk other than using the products in the real world)
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AEC Collection 2024 UKIE (mainly Civil 3D UKIE and IW)
Win 11 Pro x64, 1Tb Primary SSD, 1Tb Secondary SSD
64Gb RAM Intel(R) Xeon(R) W-11855M CPU @ 3.2GHz
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Message 87 of 100
ksorsby
in reply to: Alfred.NESWADBA

I've quite recently sat in a large demonstration of Infraworks, with a bunch of engineers, architects, GIS people etc. and we've all sat stunned as to how much not-useful it would be to us. Apart from being laggy (and it crashed 3 times), the visuals were great but virtually every question asked, the answer was 'no, it doesn't', 'it won't' or 'i'd have to ask the developers to see if'.

The landscape architect there thought the selection of trees was reasonably useful though. ;o)

 

Message 88 of 100
neilyj666
in reply to: ksorsby

...it's not a serious engineering tool IMHO.

neilyj (No connection with Autodesk other than using the products in the real world)
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AEC Collection 2024 UKIE (mainly Civil 3D UKIE and IW)
Win 11 Pro x64, 1Tb Primary SSD, 1Tb Secondary SSD
64Gb RAM Intel(R) Xeon(R) W-11855M CPU @ 3.2GHz
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Message 89 of 100
Cadguru42
in reply to: neilyj666


@neilyj666 wrote:
...it's not a serious engineering tool IMHO.

I still want to know whether InfraWorks is double floating point precision. If it's not, there's no use trying to make it an engineering design tool. I agree with others that InfraWorks is pretty much useless at this point in time for anything other than trying to show concepts. 

C3D 2022-2024
Windows 10 Pro
32GB RAM
Message 90 of 100
ksorsby
in reply to: Cadguru42

A round of guffaws was had when, during the Infraworks presentation, the speaker said 'road design is easier now' because you just have to press a button to 'optimise' the highway design. Once pressed on what 'optimise' means, the presenter said 'makes the road design optimal'. The program then locked up and we quickly moved on.

 

Anyway, enough Infraworks baiting! Smiley Happy

Message 91 of 100
neilyj666
in reply to: ksorsby

No....there can never be enough...:)

neilyj (No connection with Autodesk other than using the products in the real world)
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Win 11 Pro x64, 1Tb Primary SSD, 1Tb Secondary SSD
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Message 92 of 100
rkmcswain
in reply to: ksorsby


@ksorsby wrote:

.....during the Infraworks presentation, the speaker said 'road design is easier now' because you just have to press a button to 'optimise' the highway design. Once pressed on what 'optimise' means, the presenter said 'makes the road design optimal'. The program then locked up and we quickly moved on.


<roll eyes>

🙂

R.K. McSwain     | CADpanacea | on twitter
Message 93 of 100
john.mckenzie
in reply to: rkmcswain

you just have to press a button.

 

Where have I heard that before?

 

its no wonder we need to re-educate our bosses when they return from these presentations.

 

Just press a button.......any monkey can do it................blah...........blah...................blah.

 

garbage in = garbage out

Message 94 of 100
AllenJessup
in reply to: john.mckenzie


@john.mckenzie wrote:

you just have to press a button. 

Where have I heard that before? 

its no wonder we need to re-educate our bosses when they return from these presentations. 

Just press a button.......any monkey can do it................blah...........blah...................blah. 

garbage in = garbage out


While this is certainly a problem. I don't think it's confined solely to the attitudes regarding software. I worked under one engineer who thought he could do the major portion of the design work for a couple of miles of road in one afternoon. His tools were a hardcopy basemap, straight edge, curve templates, a protractor and a set of flair pens.
 

Once he'd done the HARD work. It would be turned over the the cad-monkeys to finish it. Of course his layouts would miss the real world by hundreds of feet. But we weren't supposed to notice that. It wasn't that he thought that the software made it so easy. I was that he thought he had turned over the most important portion as a finished product. Minor projects he'd literally do as a napkin sketches and expect the layout to be done the next day. That eventually got us sued!

 

I think a lot of bosses just look for an excuse to devalue what their employees do and aggrandize their own accomplishments. Luckily I haven't worked under too may of them.

 

Allen



Allen Jessup
Engineering Specialist / CAD Manager

Message 95 of 100
ksorsby
in reply to: AllenJessup

An all-too-familiar story unfortunately. It happens virtually everywhere I've worked in the UK, especially where I am now. I call it 'a little knowledge is dangerous' syndrome.
What I don't get is how formerly-excellent engineers can suddenly lose the ability to appreciate what it takes to engineer something, once they've ascended through the ranks.

Kevin
Message 96 of 100
BruceAdams
in reply to: neilyj666

C3D2014 is the most horrendous slow and buggy C3D release in my recent memory. I will suggest to all my clients to keep using the older versions and drop their subscription payments and demand Autodesk to fix all the legendary ignored bugs that just keep adding up along with Autodesk's bank account on our dime.

Message 97 of 100
Neilw_05
in reply to: BruceAdams

As you know, they have us by the "You Know What" with their subscription policy. It ain't going to happen.
Neil Wilson (a.k.a. neilw)
AEC Collection/C3D 2024, LDT 2004, Power Civil v8i SS1
WIN 10 64 PRO

http://www.sec-landmgt.com
Message 98 of 100
ksorsby
in reply to: BruceAdams

Having used it for a couple of days now, I've got a couple of showstopper bugs with it that are causing me issues.

We wanted to miss 2014 out but effectively got strongarmed into upgrading because we needed an additional license.
Message 99 of 100
randyspear6624
in reply to: ksorsby

It's good to see I'm not the only one who feels it's extremely buggy. I was forced to upgrade to 14 from 12 after they dumped 14 on the licenser. I worked for a couple more months on 12 but it just got worse. Re-images and reinstalls didn't help and I was basically on company  time for weeks because I was so unproductive. The funny thing is that 12, in my opinion, has been the best release to date. Now I'm trying to push them to explore civil design alternatives (ie. Bentley) and I'm supposed to be the C3D guru around here. So frustrated.

Message 100 of 100
Jasono2009
in reply to: randyspear6624

Randy, I've received a lot of feedback from this post. I would say we are in the majority that are weary of Autodesk's business practices. Definitely time to look hard at Bentley!

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