AutoCAD Civil 3D 2014 hits the streets.
I don’t know about you, but I’d sure like to have AutoCAD Civil 3D work from Field to Design to Publication right out of the box. The odds are when you set out to meet that MISSION CRITICAL goal you soon discover you’re in for much more work than you ever bargained for.
Civil 3D Is a Diva
By this I mean she can and will deliver an awesome performance (or production). BUT the logistical backend required for this kind of delivery mandates a level of unprecedented craft and attention to detail.
You Tell Me
Nothing in the process and of its self is all that difficult when taken in bite-sized pieces. It’s the shear overwhelming number of dependent details that are actually involved. The integrated parts must work together seamlessly for the user to contribute to the final successful result.
Does THAT sound familiar?
Maybe and maybe not. It’s a matter of expectation.
If you expect and get a kick out of tweaking the details all the time, this madness is exactly what you want. The “busy” work must get done by someone. Maybe that “someone” is you. The good news – maintenance and improvement can and will always fill that lust. The odds are the busy work is really not what your company or organization actually gets paid do to.
If you expect this $1000/yr software should instantly contribute substantially to the actual completion of real project work out of the box, most people are initially pretty disappointed in Civil 3D. Most people don’t believe they have much choice except to fix that. Almost everyone tells them to make Civil 3D work, someone has to do some “customization” busy work to “make the software work for you”.
“Everyone uses the software differently.”
“Everyone must have it to look their way.”
As one Civil 3D consulting expert publically put it,
“I start completely from scratch when building a Civil 3D template for every client.”
I personally chose to reject these outcomes and specifically the reasons these results occur.
A Totally Radical Expectation
A user should be able to fire up Civil 3D, load the existing survey data, design damn near anything civil, and publish it without any concern about whether the internal and behind the scenes processes are going to work out for him or not at delivery time.
How the backend system behaves should not be THE significant user issue.
That Makes Sense
The software tools should not be the issue…