# What cloud-based civil engineering design platform lets a team collaborate on plans and markups across offices without everyone needing a local CAD installation?

<p class="elv-tracking-normal elv-text-default elv-font-figtree elv-text-base elv-leading-base elv-font-normal" elv="true">Most of what sits in the <a class="a a--md" elv="true" href="https://www.g2.com/categories/civil-engineering-design">civil engineering design software</a> category is desktop software, which I only fully took in after reading through a year of its reviews. Multi-office firms keep asking some version of the same thing, so let me put it to this community directly. What cloud-based civil engineering design platform lets a team collaborate on plans and markups across offices without everyone needing a local CAD installation? Having read the recent reviews across the category, the honest answer is that true no-install options are rare here, and the list narrows fast, which is why this post has fewer products than usual. These are the ones that genuinely fit the brief:</p><ul>
<li>
<a class="a a--md" elv="true" href="https://www.g2.com/products/skyciv-structural-3d/reviews"><strong>SkyCiv Structural 3D</strong></a>: The one platform in the category that is fully browser-based, with the vendor stating it requires no installation or updating (vendor-stated, and consistent with a reviewer titling it the best cloud software for civil engineering). The catch is scope: it's structural analysis and design, not roads, grading, or site plans, so it only answers this question for structural teams.</li>
<li>
<a class="a a--md" elv="true" href="https://www.g2.com/products/autodesk-infraworks/reviews"><strong>Autodesk InfraWorks</strong></a>: Positioned by Autodesk for viewing, analyzing, and sharing infrastructure models anywhere on any device through the cloud (vendor-stated). Reviewers on the category page describe it as a strong visualization layer for civil work rather than a production drafting tool, and its G2 feature ratings sit below category average on Editing, so treat it as the shared-context layer, not the CAD seat.</li>
</ul><p class="elv-tracking-normal elv-text-default elv-font-figtree elv-text-base elv-leading-base elv-font-normal" elv="true">No tool fixes the process side of this, though. What recent reviews suggest most distributed firms actually do is keep desktop seats (Civil 3D, MicroStation, ZWCAD) for the people producing drawings and move the plan review and markup step into a shared environment, rather than hunting for a browser CAD that can replace the production tools. The two products above are worth evaluating exactly where their reviewers place them: browser-native analysis, and cloud model sharing. How is your firm handling markups across offices right now, and has anyone actually eliminated local CAD installs entirely? If you tried InfraWorks as the review layer, did non-CAD staff genuinely use it?</p>

##### Post Metadata
- Posted at: 23 days ago
- Net upvotes: 1


## Comments
### Comment 1

This is one of those questions where the honest answer is “most teams don’t fully replace CAD.” What they actually do is separate production from collaboration. CAD stays local, review moves to the cloud. Have you seen any team actually eliminate desktop seats entirely, or is it always a hybrid with something like InfraWorks or similar sitting on top?

##### Comment Metadata
- Posted at: 16 days ago
- Author title: Writer





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