Will InfraWorks 360 Replace Civil 3D or Navisworks? By Heidi Boutwell Have you heard rumors that InfraWorks 360 is the replacement for Civil 3D or Navisworks? Heidi is here to set the record straight. Recently, I attended the Autodesk Civil 3D Gunslinger event in Manchester, NH. While I was there, a couple of hot questions came up regarding the fate of Civil 3D and Navisworks. With all the changes in InfraWorks 360, will its new capabilities mean we still need Civil 3D or Navisworks in the future? What is Autodesk’s goal for InfraWorks 360, as it seems that Autodesk is trying to replace Civil 3D? In reality, InfraWorks 360 is still a very new and very powerful program. The initial concept for what InfraWorks 360 was supposed to be was a standalone engineering rendering and analysis tool. Much like Revit is for Structural Engineers and Architects, InfraWorks 360 was supposed to be the Civil Engineer’s new answer to better graphics, a more realistic display of data, and an Engineering Analysis tool that Civil 3D could not provide. the functions and processes we do today in Civil 3D with InfraWorks 360. Why is that? There just is not a way to rewrite the software code for Civil 3D and make it do what InfraWorks 360 does so well. If you think back to the Land Desktop days, this is why Land Desktop was replaced with Civil 3D in 2005. Now, another software code metamorphosis is taking place, and InfraWorks 360 is the end result. So what can we really expect from InfraWorks 360 in the future? As the coding progresses and new versions of the program are made available to us, we can expect to see better engineering analysis tools that cover a wider range of data. Also, the rendering engine is constantly being improved, so expect to see more speed and higher quality graphics. What InfraWorks 360 will not have, though, are tools for things like adding notes or sheeting, which is done so well in Civil 3D. Because InfraWorks 360 is intended to be a 3D design program and analysis tool, they do not ever intend for us to create sheets for submittals in the program. Rather, they envision users starting From this time last year up until January 2016, the their projects, laying out all the roads, utilities and grading, then analyzing the options for a design, Autodesk team had always said InfraWorks 360 will never replace Civil 3D or Navisworks; that was and finally applying those results to the design, all within Infraworks 360. Once the design is finalized, never their intention at all. But now, the tune has changed a little. The Infraworks 360 team sees the then they expect the user to transfer the design very real possibility of replacing a good majority of and results to Civil 3D for sheet creation. From www.cadlearning.com 23