Civil 3D for Public Works and the Framework

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Survey is not Design. Civil engineering Design isn’t public works Operations. Many can argue that modern Operations Engineering is effectively another discipline with different management goals and processes. Infrastructure is expensive to design and build, and more expensive to maintain. Public Works infrastructure is complex, interdepartmental, sometimes inter-agency, and often multi-disciplinary.

To customize and then maintain public works standards (or company standards) built within the context of software that constantly evolves is challenging. This is the Civil 3D Land we live in.

Civil 3D for Public Works

To successfully implement those adapted standards across multiple sub-departments, your uphill or peer partners, and external consulting partners or to remote offices gets to be trickier yet. People with varied skill levels must learn to and employ those standards in real-world projects. Frankly, many of the people involved, don’t even employ the same software.

The implementation challenge never ends. Then Autodesk delivers another new release.

We believed from the get-go that Civil 3D would play significant role in reducing those operational and maintenance costs if we could change a couple of mission critical factors. The simple truth:

“Engineers and Surveyors need to do engineering, not customize software"

The practical solution to the problem, its relatives, and in-laws is a Managed System for Civil 3D. When you ask about such a solution, the answer should be, “It’s in there?”

Enter the Framework for Civil 3D. The Framework is designed and built to do exactly that. The Framework allows Civil 3D to work in production right out of the box in the most demanding civil engineering and survey projects.

Civil 3D Style Makes Adaptive Standards and Better Interoperability Possible

One of the best things about Civil 3D is the flexibility and adaptability of a Style-based modeling software. When I say that I know some folks think,

“That will be the day.”

The worst things about Civil 3D are chaotic projects, sloppy data behind care, unmanaged namespaces, and inconsistent collections of Styles and resources. Sadly, we often manage to do all of this to ourselves. This is the Civil 3D Land that many folks struggle to work in today. A lot of things work…sort of. That’s not acceptable.

One standard that doesn’t work is bad enough. If we talk about multiple standards support or adaptive standards, people faced with their current version of the facts run screaming for the doors.

Given that we systematically manage, our projects, the Civil 3D data behind, namespaces, and the Style collections and resources we employ, Civil 3D is remarkably robust, consistent, and adaptive to standards changes. Even our basic trial product - Templates Only proves that point.

Publishing deliverables and/or exporting to other software gets easier as well. The Framework’s system tools are built and continuously improved to do all of that.

Funny, if you employ a Managed System for Civil 3D, all those expensive software Updates and release to release Upgrades demonstrably get easier too.

Build Your Own or Buy a Managed System for Civil 3D

Clearly the real problem for public works and their consultants is not a customized Civil 3D but a Managed System to get enables everyone to get that done at an affordable cost without undue maintenance and upkeep costs.

Wonder of wonders - the Managed System that is the Framework for Civil 3D includes no code. That’s right. No software to buy and upgrade. Put the resources in the right places and Civil 3D just works. If you don’t need this or that, delete it. You can put it back if you discover you need it later. If you need to make tweaks, the tools, resources, rules, and structures are all supplied to help you maintain it.

 

InstantOn Styles Preview

One of the many available Overview Videos the describe the details and mechanics of the Framework for Civil 3D products.

What You Need to Know

If you have basic AutoCAD skills, a reasonable level of experience with Civil 3D, and can perform basic data manipulation in Microsoft Excel you can modify, maintain, and improve the Framework for Civil 3D.

Templates Only Makes Civil 3D Work

We put the money where our mouth is.

We basically give away 3500+ production Styles for everything in Civil 3D in our single user Templates Only trial product for a small and reasonable service charge.

Tech schools and many others employ Templates Only every day to train students in Civil 3D.

We do have customers who happily employ Templates Only each day to perform exceptional production project work in Civil 3D.

The Framework for Civil 3D's Managed System

Most of our customers quickly upgrade to Jump Kit product because the entire Managed System for Civil 3D does make sense.

Most of our customer’s Civil 3D user staff prefer the Framework for Civil 3D over whatever form of customized Civil 3D the organization employed before. Many of those same folks built what they employed before. Simply put…
It is easier to edit than to create.

What’s Not to Like?

Support for the significant and accepted National CAD Standards including multiple popular variants of the NCS 6.0 and NCS 5.0+ Layer schemes are supplied. The supplied schemes support all the multiple NCS AEC Disciplines as well. Automated conversions between the supplied Layer Standard variants are simply built-in resources to use as required. All the rules and system managed details may be modified.

From a survey and annotative point perspective the Framework for Civil 3D includes 5000 integrated and managed Codes, Description Key Sets, Figure Prefix Dbs and all the many Style choices to support and publish the results. See the Better Civil 3D Codes to Cry For post and the Release 8 Details page for more details.

The Framework includes innovative method and practice tools to speed data collection, QAQC, and automate both the survey and design deliverable production. Our tools enable and deliver project proven Intelligent Publish on Demand in Civil 3D.

If you want to design infrastructure in Civil 3D, we supply the in-depth tools and resources to get the work done and published for any type of civil engineering project. We even cover in-depth specialty tasks and kinds project resources you will find nowhere else in the marketplace.

When we say “It’s in there.” We deliver the results that work.

Our customers today include public works departments in major metros; well-known counties, townships, and parishes; and a host of smaller public works agencies of many kinds all over the country. In truth, a significant percentage of Autodesk government Civil 3D implementation success stories are Framework for Civil 3D customers in one form or another.

There are many reasons for that. Visit our Framework for Government pages for more details.

The Innovation Beyond the Civil 3D Code
Get the Framework for Civil 3D Release 8