From the course: Autodesk Civil 3D 2019 Essential Training

What is Civil 3D? - AutoCAD Civil 3D Tutorial

From the course: Autodesk Civil 3D 2019 Essential Training

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What is Civil 3D?

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- [Instructor] With so many different civil engineering cad software applications out there, the real question is, what is Civil 3D? How does it differ from other civil engineering cad software applications? AutoCAD Civil 3D is really Autodesk's premier civil engineering and plan production software. And the reason is three-fold. One, it's an object modeling application. What that means is when you create civil design objects, such as an alignment, you're creating an alignment object in the software. This alignment object is just as much an object as a line or a circle in AutoCAD. This is different from the other software which may create a polyline that represents an alignment. Because of being an object modeling application, the objects can actually contain different relationships that go on, and this is another reason why Civil 3D is different and stands out from all the others. Some of the relationships such as object to object, a profile, surface profile, is related to the alignment, as well as the surface that it's sampling. So when one of these objects that the surface profile is related to adjusts, the surface profile dynamically adjusts as well. Another relationship is a visual relationship. All of the objects that are Civil 3D objects are visually controlled by styles. So each Civil 3D object has an associated or related style. We're going to talk more about styles in a minute. But just remember, as you're working in Civil 3D, if the Civil 3D object doesn't look the way you think it should, it's probably connected to the style that's assigned to it. Lastly, another relationship are all the labels applied to the Civil 3D objects. For example, if you move a surface three feet in either direction, the spot elevations, the contour labels, the slope labels, all of these labels will adjust dynamically in association with that move. Lastly, Civil 3D is truly a 3D modeling software. Now that doesn't mean we have to learned a lot about 3D modeling, the software handles that for us. But Civil 3D truly is 3D modeling. Let's take a look at an example here of the relationships as well as the 3D modeling. So we have an alignment, an associated design profile, a pipe network that follows of course the road design, the road design creates a surface, all of these objects are related to one another. If we change the alignment, the profiles would adjust. If we change the profile, the surface model as well as the pipes will adjust. Well let's do that, let's move this profile and we're just going to pull it down to an obvious change. What goes on is all of the information is now being rebuilt. The roadway design, the roadway design or corridor drives the proposed surface. The proposed surface is where the structures get their rim elevations. So all these are changing, but we also change the profile and the related labels will adjust as well. Above and beyond that, notice the red dashed lines in the 3D visual on the bottom right. We talked about Civil 3D being a 3D modeling software, those red dashed lines are actually a 3D chain of the alignment. An alignment is truly a 2D object. But even in Civil 3D, it is visually shown in 3D, depending on the style, as a 3D chain. It will present along the horizontal path the associated profiles. Well now we see the adjustment, you see the contours, we have a lot more tying back in as we've cut deeper into the ground. You also see the 3D structure sticking out of the ground now, which is in line with what we see here in our profile. More than that, the profile labels have adjusted. Civil 3D is truly the premier civil engineering the planned production software. Let's now learn how to use it.

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