It’s been almost four years since Autodesk bothered to do anything with Civil 3D. However I am very pleased to see a host of new core functionality improvements that will make everyone’s life easier back in the 2017 version. Even if most of the features are somewhat half-baked.

So what’s changed in Civil 3D 2017 and how can you use it? Fortunately for you, I have made a series of videos for you to see how you can use the new features. I will also highlight some of the limitations in them so you don’t spend hours beating your head against the wall wondering why they don’t work as you expected!

In a nutshell, here are the new improvements

• Civil 3D Object version has changed,
• New Corridor Feature Line Extraction workflow
• A host of Data Shortcut Improvements (Create Folders, Surface Caching, Import Multiple DREFS)
• Data shortcut corridors (Probably my favourite new feature)
• Use a feature line as corridor centreline (Very useful!)
• Corridor Curve Cleanup (Automatically remove bowties… not as good as you think it is and only really good for basic situations, but still a step in the right direction)
• Corridor Solid Extraction Improvements (Now Dynamic, with property sets for meta data)
• Civil 3D “property sets” to improve downstream data workflows (attach subassembly data to solids etc.).
• Feature Line Enhancements (‘No Site’ options, crossing centreline join (median problem fixed),
• Style Management with Reference Styles (Create a style then “link it” to other drawings, incredibly useful)

Haven’t made all the videos yet. Here are some first passes below.

New Corridor Feature Line Extraction Workflow

Data Shortcut Improvements (Including Corridor Data Shortcuts)

Featurelines as Centerlines for Corridor / Corridor Curve Cleanup