Key features of Civil 3D

Create surfaces composed of a combination of points, breaklines, boundaries, and contours with support for TIN, Grid, and Cropped, and Corridor surfaces.

Use a large collection of points acquired by laser scanners and other capture technologies to create digital representations of existing conditions and structures. Import the point data to Civil 3D to generate a 3D model to be used in your design project.

Work with editing tools that add edits to a surface definition as edit operations and not to any of the existing surface data components.

A display tool that enables you to block out areas of a surface and prevent them from being displayed or to render a section of the surface using a specified render material.

Analyze how water flows along and off a surface to better determine drain targets and watersheds.

Use the Volumes Dashboard to calculate and analyze volume surfaces and bounded areas within those surfaces.

Conduct surface-related analysis, including contour, directions, elevations, slopes, slope-arrows, watersheds, and water drop path.

Manage objects (parcels, alignments, gradings, and feature lines) with a common topology in a site collection.

Streamline the download, creation, analysis, and adjustments of field-captured survey data.

More efficiently process field-captured survey data to create an intelligent base map in Civil 3D.

Visualize and analyze geotechnical data then use that data directly in the Civil 3D design model.

Grading tools and commands facilitate the efficient design of finished ground surfaces.

Automate the process for conducting grading design studies for land areas based on established design project criteria.

Deploy both subassemblies and assemblies more efficiently by sharing a custom subassembly in a shared project location. Corridors consuming the subassembly can be easily updated to use the new version.

Create and edit corridor transition when you want to transition a parameter in a subassembly from one value to another. More controls have been added to allow easy movement of transitions and rearranging the order of transitions.

Create dynamic and data-rich corridor models for highways and roads. Build rail track corridor models, incorporating designs for switches, turnouts, and cant calculations.

Extract corridor feature lines with ease to use as a basis for creating grading objects or other design projects. Extracting feature lines can be done all at once, selected one-by-one, or by selecting a subset within a corridor region or a polygon.

Efficiently use assemblies and subassemblies to establish the basic building blocks of a roadway or other alignment-based design.

Create dynamic 3-way, 4-way, or roundabout intersections.

Model roundabouts according to defined standards. Build your roundabouts into existing corridor models, enabling your design to update automatically when you make changes to the corridor alignments.

Generate 3D models of pressure networks, such as water transmission systems. More controls have been added  for layout and editing workflows including merging pressure networks, DREF sync improvements, and party symbol display.

Efficiently draw 2D and 3D models of utility systems, such as storm sewers, sanitary sewers, and more.

Perform a variety of stormwater management tasks, including storm sewer design, watershed analysis, detention pond modeling, and culvert, channel, and inlet analysis.

Generate 3D models of pressure networks, such as water transmission systems. More controls have been added  for layout and editing workflows including merging pressure networks, DREF sync improvements, and party symbol display.

Create plan-only, plan and profile, profile-only, and section sheets by including multiple plan or profile views on a single sheet.

Extract and report material volumes and analyze quantities from materials and sectional or profile information.

Use the Dynamo visual scripting environment to develop routines that automate repetitive design tasks and expedite workflows. (video: 1:16 min.)

Manage the staggering volume of design data in Civil 3D models in this tool. Easily review, validate, report, export and edit models. Enhancements have been made to the navigation capabilities and tools to make management and reporting of custom property data more efficient.

Create and share data shortcuts for corridors.

Create professional-quality visualizations.

Import and export AutoCAD solids to IFC files.

Bring context modeling and conceptual design into your design process. Make better decisions with a real-world context of existing conditions, more efficiently consider alternatives, and complete detailed design and documentation in Civil 3D.