I spent the earlier part of this week at an Autodesk Developer’s Camp. For portions of three days, we were presented information on working with different Autodesk product API’s (Application Programming Interface). During the process much about the future of software development was discussed. Would you like to know more?

Throughout the week, there were three words that stood out above them all:

BIM (Building Information Modeling)

I don’t know about you but I just cringe when I hear the word BIM. It has become the popular buzz word of the AEC industry. Us in the Civil community often ignore it because, “Hey, it has the word ‘building’ in it – so it must not apply.”

However, really BIM is just a system to better manage the life cycle of a project and although much of it focuses on specific facility components, the concept applies to the Civil world in asking the question of what are we doing to provide a good digital base for maintenance of the project during it’s life cycle? What do you think we need/should do?

Sustainable Design

Autodesk is ‘going green’ like many other companies. All that really means is that they are becoming more conscious of the environmental impact that design has. On the first day, Erin Rae Hoffer of Autodesk spoke to us about sustainable design and even showed us a ‘concept’ software that would assist in getting the LEED credits needed for a design. It was like sitting and watching a sci-fi movie.

Again, you may ask what this has to do with Civil? However, within Civil3D is the ability for the first time to be able to create multiple design options quickly for a project. This helps us efficiently design in a way that provides the least impact to the environment.

Interoperability

Both of the thoughts above cannot be properly solved with Autodesk software unless such software continues to improve in being able to ‘talk’ to each other. The goal is that you should be able to work with any Autodesk file in any Autodesk product. Not only that but have the ability to navigate through any Autodesk application due to familiarity with another Autodesk application.

Would you not like to see C3D drawings being useful to regular AutoCAD users (without exporting/exploding) or even Revit users? Autodesk continued to reaffirm their dedication to interoperability.

 

All right so most of the general stuff was not Civil3D based but come on, I can only say so much. However, Civil3D is getting to the point that you may start to wonder what big new thing(s) could they add to Civil3D. Let me tell you that what may be coming down the line from Manchester IS exciting indeed!! And we may not even have to wait for a new release. Keep you eyes and/or ears on Civil3D.com as we will keep you up to date!