In Hyannis, MA at the annual at the Massachusetts Association of Land Surveyors and Civil Engineers (MALSCE) Annual Convention late last month The Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MASSDOT) announced the department will require future project submissions in AutoCAD Civil 3D beginning Jan 2012.

I'd personally like to say,

Thank you MASSDOT

If you're a Civil 3D user, you should say, "Thank you" too.

The MASSDOT project probably isn't the ONLY reason why Survey and other Design Feature functionality inside Civil 3D has gotten a whole lot better in the last two releases, but I'm positive it helped.

What is it people say about success?

"Location, Location, Location."

I can tell you for a fact that anyone in their right mind would probably love to spend a few days on "the Cape" in mid to late Sept. attending almost anything. The tourists have (mostly) all gone home, things are glorious (aside for the very rare hurricane), and you can actually drive around - Amazing. I am sorry I missed the event. The picture in this post is from another September. I also show off a famous Cape Cod jetty in every webinar I do...Really.

A Ship Docks Slowly

If you've been paying attention in Civil 3D land, the EVENT has been in the making for quite awhile. Such things DO take time and MUCH sustained effort which I also know for a fact (for reasons that should be obvious :).

MASSDOT will actually accept files in multiple versions of AutoCAD Civil 3D, but will "encourage" submissions in the most recent AutoCAD Civil 3D 2012 format. MASSDOT will also make its standard Civil 3D templates available.

Encourage here is probably the wrong political word. Remember this is still the State of MA. There will be More fine print and prior authorization involved.

Let's Set Politics Aside for the More Important Thing

If you are in an older version of AutoCAD Civil 3D and you want to do More productive Survey and Design work, get to 2012 ASAP and enjoy.

Better is better. 'Nuff said.

More is Possible 

Earlier this week I fired off a post about the on-going Microstation and Autodesk battle for the State DOT software contracts and how that affects all the rest of us.

Oops

In that post, I stated the Bentley software had "lost" FDOT (the State of Florida Department of Transportation) to Autodesk.

Not true. My statement was inaccurate.

FDOT has actually adopted an enlightened or "diverse" platform approach where both Microstation and AutoCAD Civil 3D deliverables are accepted.

This is the fact of life that many civil engineering firms and organizations live with anyway on a practical daily basis. All of us who move from old CAD software (no matter the software vendor) to Model-based Design Software (MDS) like AutoCAD Civil 3D will be dealing with the practical aspecits of that revolution (or evolution) for a long time.

By definition - All model-based software is Style based (even if it's not called "Style").

The Key Point of My Earlier Post Remains...

We need More evolved model-based standards based on published open documentation.

We need to be able to get the engineering work done and publish our deliverables without major hassles to multiple "CAD Standards" that actually exist for good rational and functional reasons.

Sucking up the old CAD Standards is Child's Play

Oh, it's a pain in the tail to do the work. I can speak to that in considerable detail.

As far as AutoCAD Civil 3D is concerned, what we NAME those representations or Styles (how it looks) is a MUST DO set of standards whether we like it, recognize it today, or not.

What Style and Label Styles look like may vary and MUST do so.

We need the design and quality control flexibility that diverse Style representations can provide to improve our final product faster and better. 

How we NAME Style inside AutoCAD Civil 3D should be something we can mutually agree on.

We Put Our Money Where Our Mouth Is

We provide our Civil 3D Style Naming Conventions as FREE open source documentation to anyone and everyone. We've done so for years now.

We invite and desire your comments and feedback.

A hearty "Thank You" to all of the many people who take the time to do so and have made those Naming Conventions better in significant ways. Keep it coming.

Doing this alone is impossible. 

Let's Jump Start More Possibilities