Civil Engineering Design reviews by real, verified users. Find unbiased ratings on user satisfaction, features, and price based on the most reviews available anywhere.
Best Civil Engineering Design Software for Small Businesses
Products classified in the overall Civil Engineering Design category are similar in many regards and help companies of all sizes solve their business problems. However, small business features, pricing, setup, and installation differ from businesses of other sizes, which is why we match buyers to the right Small Business Civil Engineering Design to fit their needs. Compare product ratings based on reviews from enterprise users or connect with one of G2's buying advisors to find the right solutions within the Small Business Civil Engineering Design category.
In addition to qualifying for inclusion in the Civil Engineering Design Software category, to qualify for inclusion in the Small Business Civil Engineering Design Software category, a product must have at least 10 reviews left by a reviewer from a small business.
Top 8 Civil Engineering Design Software for Small Businesses
- Civil 3D
- GeoHECRAS
- OpenRoads Designer
- ACTCAD Professional
- OpenFlows WaterCAD
- Site3D
- MicroStation
- AutoTURN
Autodesk® Civil 3D® software is a civil engineering design and documentation solution that supports Building Information Modeling (BIM) workflows on civil infrastructure projects, including roads and highways, rail, site development, airports, and water. Civil 3D helps civil infrastructure professionals improve project delivery, reduce risk, errors, and omissions, and respond faster to project changes. Additionally, users can streamline time-consuming tasks such as corridor design, (road and rai
GeoHECRAS is a river modeling software used to compute water surface profiles for steady and unsteady flow models, bridge and culvert roadway crossings, FEMA floodplain encroachments, stream restorations, inline reservoir structures, off-channel storage areas, and much more. GeoHECRAS provides an easy-to-use, single graphical platform to rapidly create stunning HEC-RAS models and 3D visualizations from a variety of different data sources like AutoCAD, MicroStation, ArcGIS, Google Maps, Bing Maps
OpenRoads Designer CONNECT Edition, the successor to Bentley’s industry leading civil engineering brands InRoads, GEOPAK, MX, and PowerCivil, is a truly innovative design application, built to address the demands of today’s evolving infrastructure industry. By blending traditional engineering workflows for plan, profile, and cross-sections with 3D parametric modeling, OpenRoads Designer enables the model-centric creation of all your design deliverables. This application supports all aspects of a
ActCAD is a 2D Drafting and 3D Modeling CAD software meant for Engineers, Architects and other technical consultants. ActCAD is a native DWG & DXF CAD software to create and edit drawings. ActCAD is based on the technologies from IntelliCAD Technology Consortium (ITC), ODA Teigha Libraries, ACIS 3D Kernel, Wintopo, ps2edit etc. ActCAD uses the most recently released version of IntelliCAD to offer the best performance and features to its users. ActCAD as many add-on commands and features supp
Utilities and engineering firms around the world trust OpenFlows WaterCAD as a reliable decision-support capability for their infrastructure. Design new water systems and manage existing water networks effectively to reduce disruption risks and energy use. OpenFlows WaterCAD’s ease-of-use helps you successfully plan, design, and operate water distribution systems: · Increase capacity to adequate service levels. · Supply clean potable water without interruption. · Deliver high quality designs
Site3D is a fully featured software product for the engineering design of highways, drainage and residential developments. Quickly and accurately design whole sites including roads, junctions, roundabouts, footways, surface interfacing, contours, volumes, drainage, housing and more. Site3D is a powerful software tool for the 3D engineering design of road schemes and infrastructure.
MicroStation’s advanced parametric 3D modeling and intelligent drafting capabilities enable infrastructure professionals of any discipline to collaborate on and deliver projects of any scale and complexity. You and your team can aggregate work in MicroStation, including designs and models created with Bentley’s discipline-specific modeling applications. As a result, you can create comprehensive, multi-discipline BIM models, documentation, and other deliverables. MicroStation and all Bentley BIM
AutoTURN is the industry standard swept path analysis software for transportation engineers, planners, drafters, and architects around the world. From concept through construction, AutoTURN ensures your projects will safely accommodate vehicles movements and meet operational requirements. AutoTURN is field-tested and proven to be the most accurate swept path solution available.
Learn More About Civil Engineering Design Software
What is Civil Engineering Design Software?
Some civil engineering design solutions can be used as an all-encompassing tool, including CAD capabilities, that is geared toward civil engineering. Others simply integrate with separate tools so they can be optimized for civil engineering purposes.
These tools can be used for any subset of civil engineering, including but not limited to structural engineering, environmental engineering, and land surveying. Civil engineering design tools have specific functionalities that ensure engineers in any subset can utilize the software in ways specific to their field.
Through their project management functionality, civil engineering design tools can help engineers determine factors such as cost, resourcing, and scheduling. This is accomplished through a variety of formulas and theories built into the algorithm of the software. After a project is completed, civil engineering design tools can help engineers monitor the structure. Overall, civil engineer design software has proven to help cut costs and limit human error associated with these projects.
Key Benefits of Civil Engineering Design Software
With civil engineering design software, you can:
- Increase productivity and efficiency in designing and modeling infrastructure systems
- Easily alter designs
- Improve accuracy, precision, and control
- Enable communication and collaboration between engineers and with clients
- Perform accurate mapping generation and analysis
- Test civil engineering models through simulations
Why Use Civil Engineering Design Software?
Civil engineering design software provides a number of benefits to users, such as:
Standardizing the industry – Civil engineering projects require a lot of moving pieces, with many engineers collaborating on the work. Because of that, it’s necessary to ensure the entire team is on the same page. Civil engineering design tools enable users to easily save and share designs to improve collaboration amongst team members. Some solutions also offer the option to print designs so that a physical copy can be shared.
Fast calculations – An important aspect of civil engineering is that calculations must be exact so the structures being constructed are safe and stable. With this software, these calculations can be made much quicker. Structures often have to go through some variation of redesign, so civil engineer design platforms can allow engineers to quickly accomplish that while still keeping up with accurate calculations. Some tools even have formulas built in to include safety standards.
Who Uses Civil Engineering Design Software?
Civil engineering design tools are most commonly by those in the field of civil engineering itself. A civil engineer designs and supervises the construction of major public works projects, which can range from buildings to highways to airports. This software helps with every step of these projects, from planning to design to execution. Some civil engineers focus on a more niche function of the field, such as transportation engineering, structural engineering, or geotechnical engineering.
Kinds of Civil Engineering Design Software
All civil engineering design solutions have the end result of helping to create various infrastructure within a community. However, some software focuses on different aspects of that process.
Planning – Some civil engineering design solutions are intended to be used when it comes to planning out the design of a structure. This can include sequencing out the necessary steps to reach completion of construction and providing teams with the proper tools so they might better collaborate during this step in the process.
Design – 3D design capability is available in a number of civil engineering design solutions. Engineers can create a 3D model of their structure and then render it in a fully realized environment so that they may manipulate the structure from any angle.
Civil Engineering Design SoftwareFeatures
The following features are commonly found in civil engineering design software.
Drawing – This feature enables users to draw basic lines and shapes to act as the foundation of the design for their structure.
3D modeling – This functionality allows users to create 3D models of the structures they are designing. These models can be fleshed out with realistic details so they can look as close to what the engineer envisioned as possible.
Editing – Civil engineering design tools provide the capabilities for users to edit their designs as they deem necessary, with functionalities such as erase, trim, undo, and more.
Rendering – This feature takes a 3D model and places it into a fully realized 3D environment, so that users can better visualize what their final product will look like.
Additional Civil Engineering Design Features
Kind –
The following features may be found in civil engineering design software but are not necessarily guaranteed to be included in every solution.
File interoperability – This ensures that the file created from the solution is compatible with a number of advanced design and imaging applications.
File size – These solutions are able to support a range of file sizes without impacting the user experience.
Sequencing – Some tools provide the option for users to sequence steps. That means they can create and animate the steps, materials, and building crews necessary to complete the structure.
Potential Issues with Civil Engineering Design Software
Civil engineering software provides many benefits to users. However, it does come with its challenges, such as:
Learning curve — Civil engineering is a complicated field; therefore, the software can prove to be difficult to master. The learning curve may especially be difficult to those who are newer in the field.
Storage – Those working in civil engineering design software solutions often end up creating designs that need to be saved as large files. This means that civil engineering design platforms may end up taking up a large portion of the memory on a user’s computer.
Cost – Since it can carry out complicated functions, this software tends to be on the more expensive side, which could make it too costly for small businesses and individual users.
