Civil 3D Reviews & Product Details

Multiple features are specifically made for civil engineers, including surface creation and on-the-spot cut-and-fill calculations. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Civil 3D is a very useful tool for engineering and design work, and I use it regularly on projects. One area that could be improved—especially for people working on laptops—is overall performance.

Modern PCs and laptops often come with eight or more CPU cores, but Civil 3D still relies heavily on a single core for many operations. While a few features now take advantage of multiple cores, the list remains fairly limited. Until Civil 3D becomes more fully multithreaded, I think it will be hard to see a major improvement in overall performance, even with newer and more powerful hardware.

Overall, it’s a capable and useful program, but better use of modern multi-core CPUs would make a noticeable difference. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I like using Civil 3D because it helps us collaborate and coordinate designs across teams and offices efficiently with shared data through data shortcuts. This makes generating plan sets much smoother. The software has a familiar basic audio CAD field, which makes most of the features simple for new designers and engineers to learn. I also appreciate how it allows for designing in 2D for those who aren't ready to dive into more advanced practices yet. The ability to quickly generate profile views for various designs is handy, and data shortcuts really make it easier to share 3D designs across multiple files without having to bring in a live model. Additionally, it's useful that one designer can work on updating a network model while another handles profile views. Overall, it makes managing complex design projects much more manageable. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There's currently no native ability or assistant workflow for modeling rectangular duct banks, which is a limitation in horizontal and vertical design. The software's three-dimensional capabilities often fall short when meeting the requirements for client submissions. This leads to the need for workarounds, especially in modeling past structures or making vertical design changes and profiles of networks. Additionally, there are significant labeling constraints when trying to utilize corridors and 3D solids. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I find the pipe networks to be a powerful tool, especially because they make it easy to update my design and quickly revise my plan sheets.

For plan production, the Sheet Set Manager is the best feature in my experience. It saves me a huge amount of time. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There are a lot of button clicks required to get where you need to go—for example, when using the grading tool. It often feels like there are too many clicks and prompts just to get a feature line to do what you want.

For a brand-new user, it can be overwhelming to figure out what tools are available and where to find the ones you need for the task at hand. Hopefully the Autodesk assistant can help guide new users and make it easier to access the right tool when they need it.

Corridor modeling is a very powerful tool, but it seems like you have to be a 15-year power user to fully understand how it works and how to best utilize it. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I like that Civil 3D enables me to be creative while adhering to local construction standards, and it facilitates collaboration between the survey team and my design engineers. It allows us to make beautiful designs for clients while keeping us grounded in practicality. I've been using it for over a decade, and it has become an essential tool for designing neighborhoods in private development. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There are workflows in Civil 3D that are disjointed and work differently than expected. For instance, creating a gravity network design for sanitary systems differs from designing water networks. While these are different disciplines, they should have a consistent interface in terms of specifics. This inconsistency requires too much specialization among CAD workers, meaning I have to rely on a "water guy" and a "gravity guy." It becomes specific enough that it's not worth training them in other aspects of the program. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It's what I am most familiar with. I started with AutoCAD 13, then learned Land Desktop, then finally migrated to Civil3D. I have become a somewhat master in C3D and have trained many of my coworkers.

I was also a CAD manager for a smaller surveying firm and created Field-to-Finish processes for different companies.

I appreciate the dynamic workflows when working with surfaces, plans-and-profiles, cross-sections, etc. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Working with point clouds. It is extremely limiting in its capability to work with anything bigger than small point clouds.

I have been working with TopoDOT within Bentley's CONNECT or Open roads Designer and it is far superior than what Civil3D can handle and do with point clouds.

We have also had to utilize Global Mapper to extract delineated point cloud areas for use in C3D. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I like how Civil 3D keeps different parts of the design connected. If we make a change to an alignment or surface, we don’t have to manually update everything from scratch. It saves a lot of time, especially when working on projects that go through multiple design changes. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There is definitely a learning curve with Civil 3D. Some features are not very easy to figure out at first, and larger files can sometimes feel slow. Also, when something goes wrong with a corridor, reference, or style, finding the actual issue can take more time than it should. I think better automation and smarter error detection would make a big difference. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I like Civil 3D for its ease of use, which is important for my work in civil engineering. I use the feature lines a lot for grading because they help me finish product plans with dynamic contours and spot elevations. I also find the pipe networks valuable since they work well for designing storm drains, wastewater, and water facilities, and allow for the creation of profiles with dynamic labels. Civil 3D makes designing complex pipe networks feasible, and that's a huge plus for my projects. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Sometimes Civil 3D is very laggy and can cause problems with fatal errors, especially when surfaces get too large. It's too much data for Civil 3D to handle, and this causes fatal errors. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I like the dynamics: when you change one feature, other features update automatically, which helps reduce inaccurate data. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Pressure pipes have been in the software for quite a while now, but they still haven’t seen much improvement. I’ve had them available for some time, and it feels like there hasn’t been much progress or refinement since they were introduced. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I really like Civil 3D's range of tooling. It's great how we can execute an entire civil design, covering everything from underground to linear structures, and it's purpose-built for industry needs. I find the corridor creation feature to be particularly powerful, especially with its ability to place a single roadway and the dynamic nature it offers. It generates a linked object with a vast amount of information for linear infrastructure, making it one of its most valuable assets. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It's a massive program, and it's on a single thread. So the processing speed is kind of behind what we would like. We would love to have the capability of processing improved. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I really appreciate Civil 3D's ability to create topo designs uniquely. It's quite useful for duplicating existing conditions when dealing with topo creation. The grading design tools stand out for me because they allow rapid creation of terrain models, which is essential in my work. Additionally, the initial setup of Civil 3D was very easy, which I found convenient. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The surface creation tools from Point Cloud aren't very good at the moment. I think using the Recap engine with segmented meshing tools might be a better alternative than the native tools in Civil 3D. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.