What is Infrastructure? Better question - What is Operations Engineering? If our firm works in Civil 3D Land for any significant amount of time, the odds are a good portion of the firm income is generated in the Operations Engineering space. If we work in the governmental or agency side of things, we call this Public Works.
Operations Engineering is the Systems and Data Behind thing.
The separation of civil engineering and survey Design Engineering project work from the similar professional discipline work in Operations Engineering projects reflects the perceived differences in purposes and income.
It is no surprise to anyone that the answer to the where’s the money question moves around.
Show Me the Money
The month is a significant show me the money month in Civil 3D Land. Let’s repeat…
Behind the scenes, Autodesk officially announced that Project Explorer for Civil 3D (PE) and Grading Optimization for Civil 3D (GO) product licenses will now be included for Civil 3D standalone subscription customers at no additional cost. Hoorah.
This is real money because it resolves into real reductions in project man-hour time.
See the recent Civil 3D Suddenly Gets Much Better post.
“In Civil 3D it’s all about Project Time…Project Time is our time.”
For many folks with project work in the Operations Engineering space its about the water – Sanitary, Storm, and Pressure systems.
It is hard to ignore…
Autodesk Innovyze
Back in Feb 2021 Autodesk announced the $1 billion acquisition of Innovyze and their water systems centric product line. The products span the range of desktop apps to cloud based SAAS offerings.
The Autodesk Innovyze 2023 products were released this spring
See the Autodesk Innovyze Infoworks Products Release post.
The post includes links to details about all the Innovyze products.
Infoworks has featured improvements to basic Autodesk Civil 3D and Infoworks InfoDrainage interoperability for a number of Civil 3D releases. In other words, the interop is even available in Civil 3D releases prior to 2023+. For example…
Civil 3D to InfoDrainage Round Trips
This Autodesk Innovyze InfoDrainage video starts off with the interesting statement that the location and pipe layout of the Pipes system starts in Civil 3D.
Notice that next to nothing else happens in Civil 3D. This is an InfoDrainage demo after all.
Sorry to Civil 3D Pipe geeks - there is some tedious, laborious, and very basic Civil 3D Pipe Network setup stuff in this video for reasons unknown. You can skip it.
Jeez. At least get a Templates Only and end the Civil 3D Template agonies.
The video is good about explaining the richer data behind in InfoDrainage.
One might hazard to guess we will see some better support for some of that Data Behind in the upcoming Autodesk Civil 3D 2023.2 Update? Who knows?
The Autodesk October Surprise
Autodesk Innovyze released some excellent Introduction to Infoworks tutorials, datasets, and video training materials for InfoDrainage, InfoWater Pro, and InfoAsset Solutions.
See the new site Innovyze InfoWorks video collection for the playlists.
These Infoworks training video series give us all an opportunity to explore how the Autodesk Innovyze products may enable better Operations Engineering inside your day to day project work.
Speaking of the Data Behind and our Civil 3D projects…
This quick video should make your hair stand on end…
Standardized Data Tool for Civil 3D - Preview
This still in beta Standardized Data Tool (SDT) from the BIM Interoperability Tools group at Autodesk reads and writes Property Set data from Civil 3D project drawings full of data to and from Excel spreadsheets with truly blazing speed. OMG!
See the more detailed and hair-raising Standardized Data Tool for Civil 3D Beta video from July and see links and videos about the related Autodesk Validation Tools.
Is there an SDT in your future? We all know that Civil 3D is a virus, right?
Seems to me the Civil 3D development team needs to get their Property Set act together real soon now.
Where do Property Sets that work matter? Let’s count the ways:
Autodesk Connector for ArcGIS, Dynamo, Project Explorer, Grading Optimization, InfoDrainage, etc.
Oh. Yeah…Civil 3D Templates, Civil 3D Styles, and Civil 3D Label Styles that work.
The Toolset to Make Civil 3D Work
Get the Framework for Civil 3D