How To Make Cents and Civil 3D

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We try and make cents out of Civil 3D. This is no simple task. The Civil 3D Diva is a big beast with lots of moving parts and pieces. The numerous methods of usage, many optional workflows, and diverse nuances of the entire Civil 3D tools software package are overwhelming. They are a never-ending story.

A new Autodesk Civil 3D 2022 and a larger Autodesk AEC Collection 2022 is almost upon us.

If you use Civil 3D, you already know that. We live it and live with that in Civil 3D Land.

We should recognize and consider carefully that we all work in an experiential bubble of our own construction.

How we perceive new Civil 3D improvements and what we expect from those software improvements affect how we then employ the tools. It is a significant issue to recognize those two separate facts and quite another to do something proactive about them.

See the recent 10x Civil 3D 2022 Considerations post.

How Big is Your Bubble?

Folks define and scope their civil engineering and survey work as they see it for practical business reasons. Some of our reasons are emotional as well.
Yes. We might consider that the art of business itself is sometimes an irrational act. Eheh.
Put another way - We need to get our work out the door to get paid.

We own the work. The work owns us.

We Experience Civil 3D Differently

This statement of a somewhat obvious reality is not all that clear until you interact with many others from diverse civil engineering and survey production environments and organizations. The software remains the same.

How folks employ Civil 3D varies immensely based on the type of project work they do and their internal historical perspectives and habits.

That second bit is often the more powerful influence.

The System is Us

It is indeed crucial to recognize our perspective is more than personal. Our human bias is always corporate. Human expectations are shared. Whether we like the fact or not, humans manage to share expectations exceptionally well.

People tend to stay and continue work at the same place. That often means we already agreed to agree on ways and means of doing things. That in-built, flavor of perspective can be firmer for those that manage and oversee the work. A thoughtful balance of our social group think can be a good thing. Yet, we must be aware of…

The Illusion of Righteous Habit

Our habits tend become the right thing to do, even when that is no longer true.

It is quite a privilege to be required by economic circumstance and my somewhat crazy internal commitment to see how others perceive and then employ the software at the nuts-and-bolts level.

I freely admit that I experience Civil 3D significantly differently than most Civil 3D production users. I am a content producer, not a consumer. Chefs do think differently about food than diners.

If we want to understand and improve a task in Civil 3D, an intimate relationship with the daily ditch digging required to complete a task is unavoidable.

 

DWF Publication Mechanics

I often must do that work differently in hope that others may also discover new better ways to get project work done.

For our Framework for Civil 3D products to be successful in the marketplace, we need to get there (wherever the new there is) before our users. This is no small task. There is nothing especially noble about the effort. It is the work we must do.

Another Trip Around the Mountain

The Framework for Civil 3D includes a lot of resources. The totality is more than most new customers imagine. We need to chew through all of those resources in advance of every new release of Civil 3D. This must be more than a series of QAQC tests. Afterall, it does not help much to test the wrong things.

How can we practically create resource content that allows the production work to be easier for our Framework customers?
Can we cover more bases in more detail this time around?
You catch the drift.

Widen Your Civil 3D Horizon

We should practice what we preach. Therefore, I curate one of the largest public collection of training videos for Civil 3D available on the web. I also personally produce many Civil 3D training videos on a wide range of topics. See the…

Site Video Index Page

You should visit that video collection of Framework videos. The listing both groups and categorizes the videos. Even if you do not ever employ a Framework product the Civil 3D method, practice, and nuance in those videos can improve the daily work for you.

The Public Sources Video Index

We all need to regularly widen our Civil 3D horizons. Our public video collection is, in some respects, more important to me and to you.
To get included there a public Civil training video:

  • Had to be found and remains available
  • Covers an Autodesk Civil software topic without major errors and/or misinformation
  • Be delivered with both video and sound and with reasonable quality
  • Be delivered in understandable English
  • I watched and survived the entire video at least once
  • I thought the video was worth maintaining a link to
    People, including yours truly, might want to find the video again later

Once is Not Enough

I hope the above grouped listings make finding Civil training videos by category and topic a bit easier. I recognize it is easy to get lost in the volume of content in the cadpilot video collections.
We dutifully recognize content authors and creators. Searching by a creator name works well.

More videos than not fail to make the cut.
My selection choices are subjective.
Those choices are often driven first by that need we all have to widen our personal and corporate perspectives.
Therefore, I am also happy to link video resources even when the topic features are what many might consider a product or service to be competitive with the Framework for Civil 3D.

In the end - Some pigs are more equal than others.

The Liberty to Make Civil 3D Work
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