Have you ever hopped up and down on solid ground that bounces like jello? I recently had the chance. All kinds of fun. This wiggly weirdness occurred at the end of my own street earlier this month. It so happens that my neighborhood is part of an on-going city curb and gutter, sidewalk, and repave project.
Miracle of miracles. For once in 30 years our California gas taxes are at work in my local part of town. This project was supposed to be completed last fall before the most recent November election. That did not happen.
Perhaps the current city council president wanted to guarantee some votes. Let’s also say the local powers that be had some execution issues. Eheh.
How to Swallow a Large Asphalt Paving Machine
Earlier this month the ground at the end of my street did its level best to try and swallow a large asphalt pavement machine. How can this be? Ok. This wasn’t exactly the typical sucking cars and trucks into hell Florida sinkhole event.
The pavement machine was attempting to put down the new pavement over a typical base gravel layer. Beneath that gravel, however, the ground itself had turned to weird form of soil jello.
If you’re interested in geotechnical matters, this gets pretty interesting.
10,000 years ago where we live in Central California was the bottom of a large freshwater lake. The huge prehistoric Lake Tulare was bigger than the modern Lake Erie. My neighborhood sits over what was once the estuary of a substantial glacial river. Think of all the ice melting out of Yosemite Valley.
That river estuary bottom produced a thick layer of a very dense and very particular clay (pun intended). Glaciers are very good at grinding granite and other rock into super fine dust.
This made me wonder if white porcelain or China clay is a product of Himalayan glaciers? Probably. Ok. Never mind.
Geotechnical Mechanics
Over the centuries that fine clay basically hardened into a water-proof hardpan layer. Here in Fresno, someone built a famous underground house under this same hardpan layer. Think of the original Star Wars house with fruit trees that grow through the roof. Cool.
Back in the day the story also goes that local fig farmers had to drill holes in this layer with sticks of dynamite to get their trees to grow in our neck of the woods. Boom.
Back in November the city’s general contractor removed about 50% of the curb and gutter on our block to replace it. The concrete contractor (who’s responsible to replace that curb and gutter) disappeared off to start and complete other scheduled jobs from early December through early March. The city had issues.
Welcome to a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year of local parking problems in the hood.
This year’s wet March storms poured water down these open ditches. At the end of our street and in a few other specific places in our neighborhood the water pooled and eventually soaked into that underlying hardpan.
The soaked glacial clay then behaves a lot like oobleck (wet cornstarch). Got to love that word. Oobleck is technically a non-Newtonian fluid. Somewhere out there are YouTube videos about both soaked cornstarch and wet glacial clays.
Take it from me the bouncy ground effect is pretty cool if you are a lightweight human.
It is not so much fun if you are a 10-ton asphalt paving machine that must be dragged back from the brink of the abyss. Eheh.
The entire event reminds me of the unfortunate combat Marines who recently perished when their tank recovery vehicle sank into a Lithuanian bog during a recent NATO exercise. Who knew? If you ask me, that is not a fun way to go quietly into the dark of night.
Speaking of Civil 3D, Geotechnical, and Europeans…
Autodesk’s Geotechnical Strategic Partner
Autodesk Civil 3D 2026 includes the same Geotechnical for Civil 3D support as in the more recent releases. Last year Autodesk signed up GeoDin out of Germany as a Strategic Geotechnical Partner from the EU. There’s a clip from an AU-Online session video that announces the first fruits of the relationship.
The GeoDin YouTube channel hosts a copy of that video.
The partnership is delivering some fruit…
The GeoDin Addin for Civil 3D
Yes. There’s an app for that.
There are free GeoDim Addins for Civil 3D 2025 and Civil 3D 2024 now available on the Autodesk App Store.
The Civil 3D 2026 release of the GeoDin Addin will be available in June.
Technically, the GeoDin for Civil 3D Addins, called GeoDin Ground, allow Civil 3D to access local, network, and future cloud hosted GeoDin glib databases. GeoDin supports the common Db engines out there. That should make sense to the Database geeks out there in Civil 3D Land.
To be clear - When you download the free app you get a free 30-day trail subscription to GeoDin to test out the full product.
Note that the free GeoDin Ground for Civil 3D apps do not support the full capabilities of GeoDin. That database centric application includes a paid subscription to the full blown GeoDin database application and its substantial data management and document capabilities.
More Geotechnical for Civil 3D Support
Meanwhile back at the shack - the recent release of Jump Kit for Civil 3D 2026 fully supports all the current Civil 3D 2026 Geotechnical capabilities which include: in-depth Civil 3D Point Style and Surface Style support, detailed production Description Key Sets, and managed Civil 3D Survey Db and Survey Query support. Who knew?
See the recent The New Framework for Civil 3D 2026 Products post and the Release 8 Details page.
Make Civil 3D Work Better
Get the Framework for Civil 3D