Civil 3D and Infraworks Interoperability

There is a chance this post will yak about the new Infraworks 2020.1 release and the Civil 3D 2020.1+ Update wizbang before the new public build of Infraworks 2020.1 slaps us in the face. Autodesk has a bunch of important Infraworks/Civil 3D interop AddOns to update and sync up as well.

Autodesk has released public videos of some of the new Infraworks 2020.1 release features and benefits. The What’s New in Infraworks help section has been updated..er..mostly.

The Infraworks 2020.1 UI

Oh, goody goody. Infraworks gets a brand new Ribbon like interface in 2020.1. The new UI is intended to be more like the rest of the AEC Collection products. That makes sense. I was always stumbling to find what I wanted in the old one. You know the drill. Where the heck did they bury that tool? Oh, yeah.

Autodesk marketing uses the hysterical (oh-so-technical) term UI Cohesion to talk about the improvement. Can you say IYI. Que the Roy Orbison’s Pretty Woman bumper music.

 

Infraworks 2020.1 UI Changes

Speaking of pretty women, Roy Orbison, and duets, did you catch the picture of Emmylou Harris in Ken Burns’ Country Music wearing a Little Feat tee shirt in the “Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way” segment? I loved Merle Haggard’s story in there about his comatose recording with Willie Nelson of the famous Pancho and Lefty hit at 4:00am. The superstar performer autopilot at work.

At first, I was a bit burned that Burns failed to mention Nashville Skyline - a record that shook the world.
I’d say Ken Burns left himself open to do a whole new series on How Country Rocks if you catch my drift…

Que any Country Rock band out of Georgia or California or maybe even Florida…maybe Little Feat’s Oh Atlanta. Hear Little Feat and horns of Tower of Power on the Waiting for Columbus live album.

Speaking of Jacksonville and great live albums, I once owned a radio station promo first press vinyl copy of the first The Allman Brothers Band record. Was li’l ol’ me, the sometimes DJ, among the first to play Whipping Post on the radio? My sister (God Bless her soul) later sold my priceless promo copy of the record at a garage sale. Tied to the whipping post indeed. Sorry, collectors.

Back on the Tracks

We trust some beta folks survived the Infraworks UI change so we will too. In six to eight weeks (maybe less), your body and brain will adapt. Funny thing is, new Infraworks users will probably get comfortable with that new UI faster than some current users and experts. Software Withdrawal is a painful thing. Some folks want to drive Civil 3D like AutoCAD 14. I saw a video about how to do that last week. No, I will not post a link.

Autodesk’s John Sayre does a somewhat scary overview of the…

 

The Autodesk Connector for ArcGIS Online

I said in the recent Civil 3D and ArcInfo Online Interoperability post some of what needs to be said. The Connector is now a product all be itself with more practical and useful tricks than my ol’ dog has fleas.

Operations Engineering is the life blood of a lot of the civil engineering and survey firms. The new Infraworks and Civil 3D capabilities in the Connector for ArcGIS Online are big time improvements that should come home to roost for many of us. For some it might/will lay golden eggs. I suggest you learn to use what you are paying for. ‘nuff said.

Civil 3D and Infraworks Design Interoperability

The potential of the shared data integrity that the Connector for ArcGIS Online provides in both Infraworks and Civil 3D in a project and/or maintenance contract context is maybe a bit easy to overlook in the sea of new in and out capabilities. Nobody wants to admit to the project or contract man-hour costs we might be talking about here.

Does this mean we could store Parcel maps and/or options of Parcel maps somewhere and get them back? You tell me. LandXML already works fine bye the bye.

We must also consider the Revit Interop as part of the big picture. Autodesk released the Autodesk Shared Reference Point Extensions 2020 for both Civil 3D 2020 and Revit 2020. If you have the project problem, you probably caught that. If you are thinking about trying to resolve commercial site project interop problems, you should look into it. It works.

The Revit bridge design and Infraworks Civil Features tools look to be richer and deeper. Let’s talk about parameters and them fleas.

The new Autodesk Infraworks 2010.1 has lots of design fixes and the Civil 3D 2020.1+ Updates have the same and adds capabilities to inhale data from elsewhere better aside from the Connector benefits.

There are improved Alignment and Profile sharing capabilities between Infraworks and Civil 3D that do not destroy what was done before. I’d have no problem with cloud-based, published DREFs with sync capabilities, but what do I know.

Gravity Pipe systems and Drainage Analysis also appears to have had many more of the basic and advanced hassles kinked out.

Time and work in the public release will tell us a lot more.

From my weird Standards and Systems Management perspective the Style Mapping and Data Mapping can be accomplished by users.

However, there is still not adequate Style and/or Data Mapping Management Toolsets and useful UIs for that in either Infraworks and/or Civil 3D to standardize these tedious interop defaults without so much busy work. Yes. Every project is a bit different which is exactly the point of shared management tools with external files to reduce the upfront hassles. The need to hop back and forth so much is a bit silly.

We Work to Make Civil 3D Work
Get the Framework for Civil 3D Release 8

 

Civil Updates and Interoperability Posts