It’s important to note that Autodesk’s Civil 3D can often be very taxing to your computer. There is a lot of processing that goes on with modeled design elements, even in the background, that enables the dynamic (connected) capabilities to occur throughout the BIM design life cycle. In turn, there are many technical requirements that need to be considered to allow Civil 3D to operate at its full potential. Here, we’ll review the minimum requirements that Autodesk recommends, with a few of my suggestions added to increase efficiency and speed throughout the BIM design process:

• Operating system: 64-bit Microsoft Windows 10
• Processor: 3+ GHz
• Memory: 16 GB RAM (We suggest going with either 64 GB or 128 GB)
• Graphics card: 4 GB (We suggest going with 8+ GB)
• Display resolution: 1980 x 1080 with True Color
• Disk space: 16 GB
• Pointing device: MS-Mouse compliant

We’ve all heard the term BIM being thrown around for quite some time now. In general, BIM is the process typically applied to and associated with intelligently and dynamically designing an actual building or structure, where architects/engineers and designers can visualize and anticipate the true constructability of a project.

On the survey and civil engineering side, we’ve been generating, designing, and modeling everything outside buildings/structures in a 3D environment for just as long, if not longer, than the term BIM has been around. However, for one reason or another, these designs have not typically been viewed as BIM by the vast majority.

This is where Autodesk’s Civil 3D comes into the picture. Civil 3D is essentially a BIM design authoring tool that fully supports both surveying and civil engineering designs. When utilized the right way, we have the power to create and manage intelligently designed models, perform cost estimations...

With all the introductions and background out of the way, let’s go ahead and jump into Autodesk Civil 3D and get acquainted with this BIM platform. When Autodesk Civil 3D is opened up or launched, you will be presented with the Start tab/screen, similar to that shown in Figure 1.1:

Figure 1.1 – User interface when Civil 3D is launched

If we then select the + sign next to the Start tab, we will see we have essentially created our first drawing and will be presented with a screen similar to that shown in Figure 1.2:

Figure 1.2 – User interface after our first drawing has been created

Along the very top of the program, you are presented with three levels of tools and functionality, as shown in Figure 1.3:

Figure 1.3 – Top three levels of tools and functionality within the user interface

Each of these levels provides varying access to the tools and functionality available within Autodesk...

Now that we’re getting a little more familiar with the various access points to locate our tools, let’s try to get a better understanding of the overall functionality and capabilities of Civil 3D. The way this BIM design authoring tool is built allows for multiple design geometries and components to be linked dynamically and, in a way, speak to each other. When one component is updated, it can potentially affect many other components that are built on top of it.

When you think about building a house, you start with a foundation, then you typically frame the house on top of the foundation, and then finish with the walls, roof, doors, windows, insulation, and so on. Thinking about how this workflow applies on the civil engineering side, we typically start with a survey, then lay out our proposed site geometry as the framework, and lastly, build everything else based on this framework (roadways, utilities, etc.).

Within Autodesk&...

In this chapter, we learned about the fundamental navigation tools and Civil 3D elements that will act as the basis for our design as we build on this chapter going forward. Civil 3D has a very intuitive and adaptive navigation workflow to ensure the analysis and design process transitions seamlessly as we move from step to step.

With the contextual ribbon, the main commands for building upon our design automatically highlight to expedite decision making. Civil 3D provides additional methods of navigation as well as diving further into specific workflows and beginning to customize your method of working.

With a firm understanding of utilizing the navigation tools, we can effectively begin our analysis and design with the core Civil 3D elements. We learned about the different elements within the software and how they respond to different parameters and functions.

In addition to this, we learned about the Civil 3D process that links these elements together in a dynamic...