explaining Civil-3D to the casual ACAD user

[Maverick91]

In my company, I'm the closest thing to a full-time CAD tech. A few engineers in our other offices know just enough ACAD to be dangerous. (Fortunately, they're not using Civil-3D.) I cringe when they send me their work to finish.

In two separate occasions, other engineers have been impressed and amazed with plan & profile drawings I've worked up using Civil-3D. They ask about it; how do I explain the differences in Civil-3D from AutoCAD, and that it's still the same base package?

[BlackBox]

I've often described it as an onion, where the Civil 3D functionality is built on top of Map 3D, which itself is built on top of AutoCAD... Thus inheriting the functionality of each nested layer.

[dgorsman]

Civil3D, like the other vertical products, uses custom objects to simplify the work needed by the user and extend the information beyond what is available in vanilla AutoCAD. These objects "know" what they are, in that they are limited in behaviour and properties the same way a line has endpoints and not a radius/diameter while a circle has a center but no end points. The properties and methods are applicable to the design field ie. a Civil3D surface doesn't have a tensile strength but may have a material and/or density for cut/fill calculations.