There are already a couple of Google Earth work arounds for AutoCAD Civil 3D 2013 floating about in various blog posts from my fellow Civil 3D geeks. If you didn't know, there isn't a working plug-in yet for 2013.
Google Earth is a must have tool to put to use BEFORE you do anything in Civil 3D. For example: You do plan your field surveys in Google Earth first, don't you? I know folks who develop their line coding plans that way every time. Saves a ton of field time. Of course they're also employing InstantOn Basic with its Description Keys and Figure Prefix Db solutions too.
Less Time and More Work. Makes sense to me.
Good imagery is often a vital part of what we do as civil engineers and surveyors. We should ALL know many places to go to get it. Our needs vary and even may vary over the lifetime of our project.
Visual feedback pays and Time always matters. The question then may become:
How Current is Your Picture
Manchester NH a few days before the release of AutoCAD Civil 3D 2013.
Can you find Dave's car in the parking lot? Actually there are images from other parts of town after the release date. Ooooo. I swear the local mosquito abatement folks are checking my backyard for over water puddles as we speak.
In the last month Terraserver has hooked up with a NEW, HUGE, GIGANTIC, and CURRENT collection of imagery. These folks have been at this for a long time. Before there was a USGS map server (where did that come from?). Before there was a Google Earth (where did that come from?) they were at this. Seriously, I thought everyone knew they were one of the places to go. But I guess not from the Twitter feeds, forum chats, etc. that I've seen.
Here's Terraserver on the web. Oh ludites. Go and bookmark the link.
Herd Moves
Dag nabbit! Why didn't you tell me sooner? Social media in the New Economy may change your image in unexpected ways. Timing appears matter?
There was a big initial rush on their site right away when they annouced the new imagery collections. Oops. They had some backend issues service issues with their providers too. These have since been corrected and Terraserver life appears be back more to normal.
Here a few bits from the Terraserver press release from last month.
Updated/Current Data
The average age of the brand new high resolution imagery is less than a year old. This stunning and detailed imagery will also let you view some areas less than a month old.
Worldwide Coverage
The new TerraServer images cover virtually every spot on Earth including major cities, airports, coastlines, as well as rural and urban areas in the United States and all over the world.
Huge Image Selection
TerraServer has just added hundreds of millions of images to our database. In most major cities, you now have over 10-20 different image dates to choose from. Not even Google or Microsoft has all the updated imagery that TerraServer now has.
Website Enhancements
Terraserver also made several technical improvements to TerraServer, including upgraded search, larger free subscriber prints and new imagery selection dropdown.