Should I always be updating civil 3d to the most recent year?

[twbrown025]

My company has a subscription for 3 years that allows us to access all updates and fixes of AutoCAD if we want them. We are currently operating on Civil 3d 2017 and are behind on many updates which I believe would be fixed by these updates.

Should we stick with 2017 and make the necessary service updates or should we always be upgrading the version as they are released?

In your experience are there any negatives to upgrading to Civil 3d 2019/2020? 

or are there too many bugs in the newer versions that make it not worthwhile to update. 

Any input is welcome.

Thank you

[neilyj666 · Accepted solution]

I update to the latest when the Country Kit has been released (but there are only 2 users in the company) as the previous bugs are usually fixed but new ones are inevitably introduced. Some people will wait until the first Service Pack/incremental update before making the leap to the new version.

I wouldn't recommend updating users piecemeal nor running several different versions for compatibility reasons.

Look at the difference in functionality between 2017 and 2020 and if any of the new stuff is going to help you then upgrade.

[twbrown025]

We have a fairly small company too so it may be easier to upgrade more consistently. I will look at the details of the different versions and see if what we need. 

Thank you for the reply.

[neilyj666]

HTH - If this answer solved your problem please mark as solution
All likes gratefully received...:)

Neil

[autoMick · Accepted solution]

I've tended to update my 2 machines every second year and I keep the old version on the computer until I'm happy the new version is performing well. Traditionally I've also waited until the 1st couple of updates and the country kit was available, but this year I've installed 2020 already (since the country kit was available). So far, so good.

There's no reason to regularly update unless you are after the newest features. Sometimes an update will result in a major loss of functionality - for instance, 2016 could handle LiDAR data and point clouds directly, whereas later versions  you need to go through more steps. Always do a bit of research to find out what's changed before you update. You will find that Autodesk will publicise what has been added, but not necessarily what's been taken away

Cheers

Mick

[jefflambert9091]

I agree. We have over 40 users. We wait until the version is out, monitor the discussion groups (typically wait until after the first service pak) and review the pros and cons of the new features vs loss of some functionality.