If you have had problems getting Civil 3D to build a surface from Google Earth, you are not alone. I thought maybe my laptop was angry at me again, but it turns out that the new version of Google Earth (the current download is 4.3) has changed something in how it handles the terrain model data. (By the way- importing Google Earth images into Civil 3D still seems to work just fine.) **This is nothing that Autodesk can fix. The problem lies with Google.**

Read more after the jump, and find the work around here.

Sometimes I get the surface to build to about 50% then I have to force Civil 3D to close. Sometimes I get an error like the image below. Sometimes, I just get nothing. It must be absolutely impossible to keep up with a moving target like Google, so this isn’t such a big deal now that I know it isn’t my imagination. Just do yourself a favor and don’t upgrade your Google Earth install or see if you can find a previous version to use from your downloads folder.