Winning Civil Projects with InfraWorks 360 By Heidi Boutwell Having issues winning projects? Maybe you should give InfraWorks 360 a try. Navisworks, but that takes up some serious time, and you might even have to use 3ds Max with Civil View to get everything to look good. Or, you can use InfraWorks 360. You’re at the office in the conference room. The potential client is sitting across from you with a few sheets of paper in hand, describing the existing property that they have and what their desire is for a new project. Maybe they want to create a subdivision, trail, bridge, or even an entire waste water treatment plant. If the only tools you have at your disposal are CAD programs, such as SketchUp, Civil 3D, or AutoCAD, all you can do is provide them with a preliminary look at what you have drawn. But did you know you can create an awesome presentation that can not only show the client your ideas, but also drive or even fly them through your model, illustrating key issues and design features of your unique ideas for their project as you go? How do you do this? One way is to use InfraWorks 360 provides great viewing functionality for your next project. You can create a preliminary project based on whatever information you’re given from the client. At the very least, you’ll need an address to begin. From there, you can bring in surrounding imagery, topography and, in most cases, roads. Even 3D buildings of the surrounding area can be brought in. After that, you can design roads, bridges, subdivisions, parking area, buildings and landscaping. Next, you can slowly walk, drive or even fly through the model right there in the conference room with the client looking on. Once you have that 3D model created, if the client wants to modify your design, it only takes a few minutes. Right there, still in the conference room, they can instantly see the results. At this point, you’ve taken maybe 15 minutes to both show your design and make changes in the program, yet you’ve already sold them on using your firm to carry out their project. They love what they see, and probably ask if they can have an image made from it or maybe even a small movie clip. You assure them that after some final tweaking, they can have it in the next day or two, or maybe in the next hour, depending on their request. Because the client was easily able to both visualize the concept of design for their project and communicate their www.cadlearning.com 19