Autodesk Civil 3D 2022.1 Update Arrives

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The long-awaited Autodesk Civil 3D 2022.1 Update hit the street earlier this week. The Civil 3D 2022 Update 1 is a major set of new interface improvements, significant performance enhancements, and important fixes for Civil 3D. Don’t try to employ Civil 3D 2022 without it. This Civil 3D Update 1 makes our lives in Civil 3D Land better in a lot of ways.

Autodesk Civil 3D 2022.1 Update

Autodesk has an official published What’s New in Civil 3D 2022.1 features and benefits. The bottom line is that almost every Civil 3D user can and will benefit from something in this Civil 3D 2022 Update 1 no matter what types of work they do and how they can do it now in Civil 3D 2022.

Civil 3D 2022.1 is more significant to our daily work than an upgrade to Civil 3D 2022 from an earlier Civil 3D release alone.
Hey. Those earlier release Upgrades got better and easier too.
Earlier this summer Autodesk went back and updated important Civil 3D Object Model and API issues in Civil 3D 2020.6.1 and Civil 3D 2021.3 Updates before this Civil 3D 2022.1 Update.
Hint – Get your project work up there before you upgrade it.
The Civil 3D Batch Save Utility is your friend.

I’m not sure if that makes this Civil 3D 2022.1 Update a Twofer, a Threebe, or just a No Brainer?

First, all the other Autodesk Civil Infrastructure related stuff. Why?
Because most of us must manage (or is that juggle) more than one thing at a time.

Autodesk Clouds in Your Coffee

Autodesk and the stock market analysts care. Do you?

If you work in any Autodesk Cloud and particularly in BIM Collaborate Pro or the Construction Cloud, a lot of the Civil 3D project Data Shortcut (DREF) maintenance and repair work (stuff does happen) gets easier and is now less of a hassle.

Civil 3D Reference Templates (TREFs) are handled a bit better as well.

This is the result of the improved integration with the Autodesk Desktop Connector (use the latest one) and some improved Civil 3D internal tools like Repair Broken Data Shortcuts to handle (eheh) By Handle and By Name DREF adjustments.

As a Civil 3D user you train yourself to ritually visit the Civil 3D Data Shortcut Manager Tool (DSM) when you open your project drawings? If not, why not?

Sorry Civil 3D survey folks. We are still waiting - no new support for production Survey Db functionality in the Autodesk Clouds Document management environments. Arrrgh. The Autodesk Clouds do remain a decent publishing house for our Survey Db work.

Autodesk Project Explorer

Project Explorer (PE) should probably be part of Civil 3D but isn’t.
In other words, the PE is worth the price of admission.
To use the PE is to love the PE.
There is a Project Explorer Update 1 for 2022 that includes support for Rail - Alignments and Cant reports in the PE.

For all the rest of us there are much improved PE Table format capabilities including support for multiline Headers and the important ability to Group report items in PE produced automated and static Tables in Civil 3D.
The PE remembers how to repeat all that table magic time and time again. Oh. Yeah.

If you read the recent and updated Alignment Based Point Groups post, I trust you might get it that the Project Explorer reporting for Feature Lines (corridor ones or otherwise) and lots of other Civil 3D important data behind in 2022 makes the annotation by Point Labels a much-improved Civil 3D production annotation experience.
More about that Intelligent Publish on Demand (iPOD) later in other posts and videos.

Infraworks 2022.1 and Grading Optimization 2022.1 Updates

Earlier this summer Autodesk already updated both Infraworks and Grading Optimization (GO) to an Update or Hotfix 2022.1. Don’t forget to install these before the Civil 3D Update or the Civil 3D 2022.1 Update may cause you some weirdness.
There is a new Infraworks 2022 Update 1.

If you have AEC Collection licenses.
There is a new GO - Grading Optimization 2022.2 Update.

 

Civil 3D 2022.2 Grading Optimization

Autodesk’s John Sayre demos the new Retaining Wall Grading Optimization object.

The Cascade of Other Software Enhancements for the Civil 3D 2022.1 Update

We might expect a rasher of other Civil 3D related software tools, enhancements, or whatever they call them to get Civil 3D 2022.1 Updates and fixes before and after Autodesk University 2021.

 Civil 3D 2022.1 Update

There are a ton of new features, benefits, and fixes built into the Civil 3D 2022.1 Update. Autodesk made a big push to improve Civil 3D performance for drawings, surfaces, networks, DREFs, and Corridor engine issues.

First here are a few new things to keep in mind.

Start Up Behavior

Civil 3D on Start up will no longer automatically search for all projects in the Working Folder location.
There is a new system variable to change this behavior back to the previous Civil 3D start up behavior.

When you open a drawing Civil 3D will set the Working Folder to the associated project if there is one. If the drawing has no project association, you must set the project association and Working Folder and project manually.

Improved Performance

From Autodesk’s perspective, improved Civil 3D performance for many common Civil 3D user tasks was a major focus for Civil 3D 2022.1 Update. It shows. Civil 3D 2022.1 drawing Open, Save, REGEN times all got better. Data Shortcuts (DREF) performance is improved. Corridor rebuild, subassembly targeting, REGENS, and both Cross Section Views, and Corridor Section View performance is better. Pressure Pipes performance is better.

Better rebuild visibility. The all the levels of the Toolspace now show Civil 3D Features with out of date (need a rebuild) icons.

The Corridor update process in 2022.1 is new and has demonstrable performance benefits. The Corridor engine now sorts its rebuild work based on the order of dependencies which is a big improvement.

There is a new Toolspace Right Click menu command called Rebuild Out of Date Items.
The command will rebuild all underlying Features and dependencies in proper order instead of just some of the Features as in previous releases.

Whether we call this an enhancement or a fix, the Civil 3D raw performance upgrades are mission critical.

Prototype Corridor Templates

Civil 3D will now allow you to apply a new Corridor Template to a new or previously created Corridor.
This allows for the easier customization of Corridor defaults, name templates and conventions, and other Corridor creation Settings.

In previous releases, we could only do much of this by Copying Settings from one Corridor Region to another Region in the same Corridor.

Simply put, we can now copy between Corridor Regions in different Corridors. Hoorah.

Corridor Targeting Interface

This is a major change and improvement to the previous and very tedious Corridor Targeting methodology. This new Corridor Target dialog box interface will undergo further future improvements, but even now is significantly better than the old interface.

This video is worth a peek.

 

Civil 3D 2022.1 Corridor Enhancements

The interface is modal which allows us to see and interact with the rest of Civil 3D while Targeting happens.

We can filter and select Corridor targets by subassemblies and/or station ranges.

New context menu picks to copy targets from one subassembly and paste them to one or more other subassemblies.

Corridor Parameter Matching

Civil 3D now automatically searches for name matched Alignment and Profile targets.

A new Run the Match Parameters command that allows us to match parameters between different Corridors as well as Regions in Corridors.

New Rail Workflows

 

Civil 3D 2022.1 Rail Turnout and Crossing Geometry

There is now support for Create and Edit of Turnouts and Crossovers in Civil 3D 2022.1.
The quick video by Autodesk’s, Ben Wardell makes the point.

Civil 3D 2022.1 Update Fixes

Almost all mission critical Civil 3D Features received some fix attention in the Civil 3D 2022.1 Update.

See the Autodesk Civil 3D 2022.1 Update news post for all the details.

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