Autodesk showed off a new and improved Autodesk Desktop Connector (ADC) in many public Autodesk University 2025 sessions. In early October, Autodesk finally released that higher performance version of the latest and greatest ADC to the masses. Hoorah.
There's more. In case you missed it - Autodesk Docs users may now include AutoCAD and Autodesk…
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Posted by
Tench Tilghman
Oct 09, 2025
Tags Desktop Connector, ADC, Autodesk Docs, Forma Data Management, FDM, Project Management, CAD Standards, Update
Many, if not most, of our Civil 3D Projects will involve multiple Reference Replacement processes and workflows. Many of us in Civil 3D Land employ the classic AutoCAD-based External References (XREF) basemap strategy in our plan set publications. We publish a stack of separate drawings to better separate and effectively manage the content of the…
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Posted by
Tench Tilghman
May 22, 2025
Tags XREF, DREF, IREF, Project Management, Data Shortcut Manager, Data Shortcut Editor, Reference Explorer, video, DWF
Whether or not we choose to employ Styleless Data References in our Civil 3Dprojects is a business decision that deserves some careful consideration. There are Civil 3D technical, stability, and project performance reasons to take the time to do so.
For the most part the NoStyles workflow mechanics are mindlessly simple to execute. In the context of most…
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Posted by
Tench Tilghman
Feb 20, 2025
Tags DREF, Project Management, data shortcut, data reference, Update, Upgrade, implementation, QAQC, project template
We previously discussed the challenges that surround the formal data Dependencies that play an integral role our daily production work inside Autodesk Civil 3D. It is safe to say that we learn to manage Dependencies, or the Dependencies control us.
Put another way – we employ Civil 3D to produce managed projects of data references and those…
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Posted by
Tench Tilghman
Feb 13, 2025
Tags DREF, Project Management, data shortcut, data reference, Update, Upgrade, Style Management, implementation, QAQC
We are dependent on Autodesk Civil 3D to get our project work done and to execute our work and produce our deliverables. The number of formal data Dependencies inside Civil 3D and our civil engineering and survey projects appears to do nothing but increase and become more complex. Dependencies are trending and dependencies also tend to explode.
Software…
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Posted by
Tench Tilghman
Feb 06, 2025
Tags DREF, TREF, IREF, data reference, data shortcut, reference, Dynamiic Model, Project Management, video