Infratech Civil

WHAT'S NEW IN CIVIL 3D 2021 

Autodesk has released its 2021 product versions. Today, we are reviewing is the latest version of Civil 3D.

So, what's new in Civil 3D 2021? 

One of the first things Autodesk users look for when a new line of products is released is the backward compatibility. Well, the good news is that you don't have to upgrade all those drawings (before 2018 anyway). Civil 3D 2021 is compatible with all previous versions up to 2018.

Now that we have that out of the way, what else is new? Well, let's find out in this blog post. Spoiler alert! Most of the important changes are related to Civil 3D and Infraworks interoperability.

CIVIL 3D 2021 AND INFRAWORKS

With Civil 3D 2021, we now have better interoperability with Infraworks as far as corridor modeling is concerned. The collaboration between the two software is truly a two-way street now. Civil 3D 2021 corridor models can be exported back to Infraworks while maintaining all design features. The Export to IMX command allows us to export the Civil 3D 2021 model back to Infraworks without losing any corridor design feature.

WORKING WITH BRIDGES IN CIVIL 3D 2021

We now have the capability to bring Bridge design to Civil 3D 2021, which was not possible up to now. Infraworks offer several options to bring bridge design into Civil 3D 2021. Among the options, we can

• Publish Civil Structure from Infraworks to Civil 3D
• Export the bridge to an IMX file and import into Civil 3D
• Or simply access the bridge information through the Infraworks model database

This is a truly great addition to Civil 3D 2021, due to the great bridge design chops offered by Infraworks 2021.

CIVIL 3D 2121 PRESSURE PIPE NETWORK

In addition to the Infraworks operability, Civil 3D 2021 has some significant in-product improvements. The most important one is probably the Pressure Pipe component. Now in Civil 3D 2021, it is much easier to work with pressure networks, thanks to alignments and profiles.

Indeed, we can use alignments and profiles to generate pressure pipes. While the alignment can assign the 2D design, the profile will provide the information of elevation along the alignment. We can, therefore, use the profile editing tools to edit the network, as we would with a profile.