Civil 3D vs ESRI Arview GIS

[jeff.richards]

My company is currently debating the need to purchase ESRI Arcview to work on a large planning project. Is there a significant difference between the two in terms of their handling:

-density counts
-slope analysis
-large raster files
-excel data
-coordinates/geospatial data

Any and all observations are welcome and very much appreciated.

Jeff

[Jmurphy]

I have crashed (BSOD) ArcView about the same or maybe more as I have ACAD. Spend the money you would be paying for ESRI, their maintenance agreements and the extra modules you need to run 3D analyses with that they don't tell you about and put it towards a high powered workstation for Civil3D and Map3D.

[dgladfelter]

Personally I really like the thematic mapping abilities inside Map 3D (which Civil 3D is built on top of). At my former company, I had a core of users who swore by ESRI's ArcMap, and wouldn't touch AutoCAD Map 3D. On the other I'd demonstrate Map 3D to another group of users, and they would immediately say "Wow, I thought only ESRI could do that." After they learned what Map 3D could do, they really liked the idea of being able to perform geospatial analysis in the same environment they did their design.

That said, if you open Map 3D and try to use it like ESRI ArcMap, you will absolutely hate it, and call it all sorts of names. On the other hand, if you open it up, understand this is not ArcMap, spending the time to learn how to do things in Map 3D, then I feel both platforms are equally capable.

Of course my big argument has always been, why buy two pieces of software that basically do the same thing? You've already got Map 3D (Civil 3D), why buy ESRI if you don't need to.

[jeff.richards]

Thanks to all three of you for the replies. This confirms feedback from other resources (including one from outside the Autodesk sphere) that Civil 3D can perform on a similar plane with ESRI products at a fraction of the cost. We will stay where we are right now.