If we read the coffee grounds, it is easy to tell that Autodesk Civil 3D 2026 is almost upon us. AutoCAD 2026 and the Map 3D Toolset already hit the street. Hoorah. This week in preparation for that pending Civil 3D 2026 release, Autodesk released Civil 3D Updates for Civil 3D 2023, Civil 3D 2024, and Civil 3D 2025. That’s a bunch of updates!
Autodesk publishes some information about the contents of the Updates. Here’s what they don’t or won’t say about them…
Civil 3D Object Model Updates
It may surprise some that the Civil 3D 2023, 2024, or 2025 we installed way back when is not the same software today as it was yesterday. This is a good thing.
Below are the links to the most recent Civil 3D Updates.
One probably applies to you.
If not, it probably should. Maybe you work too hard. Eheh.
These recent Civil 3D Updates for the older releases synch the Civil 3D Object Models of each of these earlier Civil 3D releases with the soon to be released new Autodesk Civil 3D 2026 Object Model.
In effect, the typical prerelease Updates for the older releases help Autodesk deliver on the important promise of Civil 3D backwards compatibility.
We can and should plan and manage our working Civil 3D production environment around them.
Out here in Civil 3D Land, we labor in a world of projects and the interconnected Civil 3D data behind of managed Data Shortcutted Civil 3D Features stored in multiple drawings. Our daily work requires edits and updates to multiple drawings. We should try to keep the Object Models in all these drawings in synch.
Autodesk is kind enough to provide us powerful tools to help us do the Managed Update and/or Managed Upgrade work.
The Civil 3D Batch Save Utility
The Civil 3D Batch Save Utility (BS) makes our Civil 3D resource maintenance and Civil 3D Project Upgrades and Updates possible. These are much easier to pull off in less time and with less effort.
See the infamous Batch Save and Those Painless Civil 3D Upgrades post.
If you prefer to manually update every drawing in a project manually or by script, by all means - Enjoy.
The most important thing about the Civil 3D Batch Save Utility is to run the process on a copy of the Civil 3D project that only BS has access to. This means for some amount of time the location of the project copy will be different and/or Civil 3D users must not work on any of the project drawings.
Even with network hosted Civil 3D projects BS is demonstrably quicker at updating drawings since BS can run in a headless mode without all the performance load of the Civil 3D interface.
Limiting the BS session time out and number of sessions properties in the BS interface is usually essential. Session time out must account for network access. Too many simultaneous Batch Save sessions tends to produce more update failures.
We need at least a simple script that performs PURGE of regapps, an AUDIT, and SAVE of each drawing.
The Autodesk supplied sample scripts and lsp files do work.
Batch Save can actually perform many Project Maintenance and drawing update tasks like replacement or updates to Layer Systems, Block definitions, etc. Batch Save fully supports SCRIPTCALL and the chaining of scripts and LISP commands.
To Process or Not to Process
There are usually drawings that we will NOT want Civil 3D to touch in most of our working projects.
The Civil 3D Object Model can and does act like a virus. Eheh.
The easiest way to restrict BS access in to make the drawings read only or temporarily remove them from the BS processed project folder structure altogether.
For larger projects - Remember we can process parts of the project separately.
Batch Save runs from a root folder and ignores references if the drawing will open.
For more specific details and some deeper step by step see this older post-
Project Upgrades to Civil 3D 2023.
In any case enjoy the latest Civil 3D Object Model Updates.
Don’t hold your breath while we wait for Autodesk Civil 3D 2026.
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