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A Civil 3D CAD Manager from a regional civil engineering firm called me the other day. The topic of the Civil 3D Survey functionality for one reason or another came up in our conversation. For those of you who follow this blog, you know I’m a Civil 3D Survey fan for a host of reasons.

The CAD Manager claimed his firm had tried Survey once or twice, but these days ignored all that stuff. Frankly, I was sort of surprised given the type of project work he said that his firm performed since it involved a lot of Plan and Profile sheet production. He knew his firm needed to up their game - why we were talking.

If we can employ Survey in Civil 3D well, we have a lot more publication flexibility at our fingertips. This is as true for civil engineering design as the survey side of the shop. These Civil 3d skills are particularly true and useful for corridor-centric projects where so much of the annotation in projects can be linked to the relationship of Alignments to point locations on our published sheets. Some time ago I named this powerful workflow…

Intelligent Publish On Demand

iPOD is far more than a catchy turn of phrase. In deliverable production terms, this Civil 3D Survey-based workflow works better at managing the complex linear/location based annotation we have to produce.

iPOD is admittedly a more sophisticated and advanced approach to project deliverable publication. It’s based on the concept that we can create a managed relationship between Alignments and Alignment-Based Point Groups in Civil 3D.  There is even a free, in-depth walkthrough Deliverables course with detailed outlines and a bunch of videos on the subject.

On The Road to Production Performance

The CAD Manager said that’s all well and good, but where could he go to get started employing Survey in Civil 3D in the first place. He’s right. Civil 3D point resolutions are the result of a complex set of integrated parts. That is a challenge. Even if you own a copy of the Framework for Civil 3D, you can still get lost on the road to production.
I pointed him to our famous Civil 3D Survey at Jump Speed page.

Here’s a selection some important get going posts. Most of them contain training videos.

Civil 3D Survey at Jump Speed Posts

Civil 3D Setup Checklist

  • Every time you start Civil 3D remember these essentials. Older video but everything still applies

Civil 3D Survey Project Prototypes

  • The essentials of a Survey Project Template in Civil 3D

Survey Setups and Figures

  • How to preview and check all the Survey data before you start editing. A demo project. Video

Survey Query Basics

  • How to build Survey Queries. Video

Shared Resources in Civil 3D

  • How to store and share Survey Queries. Video

Survey Query Tool

  • Survey Query Tool. Documentation

Surfaces from Survey

  • How to build a QA Surface from Survey. Video

In the last month or two I posted about some other new and important Survey in Civil 3D resources.

Adaptive Symbol Standards for Civil 3D

  • What are Framework Symbol Set resources and how they work

Civil 3D Point Edits

  • How to practical Edit and change those complex point resolutions

The Design Control Manager for Civil 3D

  • How to see the Civil 3D Alignment for what it really is

Better Codes Points and Figures in Civil 3D

  • New more powerful Survey Codes, Description Key Set, and FigureDb Spreadsheet Tools

Release 7 for Civil 3D 2019 Details

  • What the latest release of the Framework for Civil 3D can bring to your table

Maybe that’s all a lot more than you wanted to know. People say that I tend to do that.

Who knew a set of resources for Civil 3D could change the way we work so profoundly for the better.

Innovation Beyond the Code
Get the Framework for Civil 3D