Urban planning software - Please help a lost soul

[KWDWallace]

(hope this is the right forum)

I have always been fascinated with city planning and urban design. I like the idea of designing towns/subdivisions/cities. Problem is, I don't know what software to use.

I work for a company that uses a ESRI and Autodesk products such as Map, Land, Civil and a bunch of others I can't think of right now.
We've got extra licenses and computers so that's not a problem. The problem is everyone I ask is bias towards their own product.

I've been reading product information at both ESRI and Autodesk sites but I'm having trouble differentiating between the autodesk products.

Is Civil 3D the best option?

Look forward to your suggestions and thank you.
Ken

[Jmurphy]

Map3D is the geospatial (GIS) product which is built on top of AutoCAD. It's used by city planners and utilities companies. Civil 3D, which is built on top of AutoCAD Map3D, is the engineer design product. It's used by the engineers to design roads, water systems, utilities, and the infrastructure that keeps those cities alive. It's used by surveyors up to federal governments. Land is the old product that is no longer being sold and most of the users have upgraded to Civil3D. In the past few years Autodesk has created what they call the Suite products, What these are is a set (group) of products to help meet the needs of users. They realized that no one product fits everyone needs or does the job for everything. For example in your quest to design a city. The products that designs the buildings does not have the tools to load up a map and fine the best place to build a shopping center. There is where Map3D comes into the picture, it has the tools to analysis the area and locate the location a shopping center can be build. Next comes the Civil3D product to do the site plans, the survey, grading, utilities design and access points. parking lots and everything need for the design. Now that you have the site picked out, the site designed you need to design the building. This is where the Revit product comes into play. Now because you have dwg files from the Civil3D design you also have RVT files from the Revit design. This is where some of the other Autodesk products Navisworks & Max3D come into play. It can take the different files and combine then together to create the "city" that you want to build and VIEW. Why multiple products? Because not everyone has the knowledge to use all of them or the know how to design all the parts. I may be able to take a map and find the perfect site for the shopping center but I don't know what size HVAC unit to design for the building or what the laws says I need for fire exits and parking spaces for the handicaps.
So to answer your question, what do you know about everything required in designing a city and it's infrastructure? How much money do you want to spend?

[mjfarrell]

I would suggest a combination of Civil 3D and the Infrastucure Modeler for your urban planning.

[KWDWallace]

Thank you both. I will start with Civil.

Ken

[robert.248186]

I work as an urban planner, I use both ESRI and Civil3D and let me tell from hard earned exp. Definitely Civil3D. Or more correctly Civil3d AND 3dMAX with CivilView installed, if you want to have really slick visualizations at the end.

[johnklok372704693]

Now a days there are many software's are available for 3D designing which are useful in making town planning design. Like Map3D, Civil 3D, ESRI, etc. You can find other 3D auto cad designing software online.