Autodesk releases InfraWorks and Civil 3D 2019

Autodesk announced the latest releases of Autodesk InfraWorks and Autodesk Civil 3D 2019. These software releases provide enhancements for closer collaboration, improved design, more efficient drawing production, tighter interoperability, and smoother data exchange, the company said.

Following are the key enhancements for both products.

InfraWorks

Collaboration

Enterprise cloud collaboration with BIM 360 — Teams can now collaborate on InfraWorks models using the Autodesk BIM 360 platform. This enterprise-based platform allows companies to better manage project data, controlling access to project-specific libraries with roles and permission settings. With this cloud-based solution, users can select a BIM 360 project in which to store new InfraWorks models created with Model Builder. Team members can also take advantage of the BIM 360 document management functionality to view and markup valuable project data.

Shared views — Shared views are a quick and simple way to share InfraWorks models online without having to invest in an enterprise-level solution like BIM 360. An Autodesk account is all that is needed. Once models are shared online, others can view and comment on that shared view.

Design

Terrain contours — The display of terrain contours has been enhanced with view-based settings to control the presentation and visibility of contour lines and elevation text labels. For example, contours and elevation labels can be set to fade in and out based on camera distance. Or specific major and minor contour intervals can be set to display when zooming in past a certain point. In addition, display performance has been greatly improved, regardless of the number of contours displayed.

Parametric tunnels — InfraWorks now supports parametric tunnel component parts and assemblies, allowing users to design tunnels in the context of an overall infrastructure project. For even further customization, parametric tunnel sections can be designed in Autodesk Inventor and imported into InfraWorks. The parametric InfraWorks tunnels can also be sent to Autodesk Revit for more detailed design.

Detailed bridge design — InfraWorks road alignments and span end lines can be transferred to an Autodesk Structural Bridge Design model, allowing a bridge designer or engineer to create a more detailed bridge model and perform refined analysis.

Consolidated road modeling — All the road modeling tools have been consolidated in this release of InfraWorks. Planning roads are for visualization of large networks and component roads are for preliminary engineering. When opening an InfraWorks model in this new release, all existing design roads will be automatically converted to component roads

Interoperability

Dynamic integration with Revit — Changes to InfraWorks bridges can be dynamically updated in Revit. When users modify a bridge in InfraWorks (that was previously sent to Revit), they have the option of automatically updating the bridge in Revit to match the InfraWorks bridge. This avoids losing all the detailed design work that has been done on the bridge in Revit.

Import InfraWorks roads as Civil 3D corridors — When component roads are imported from InfraWorks to Civil 3D, they will automatically become corridors with surfaces and subassemblies. In fact, all InfraWorks design roads will be automatically converted to component roads, giving users the enhanced design capabilities that component roads offer while supporting more robust interoperability with Civil 3D.

Civil 3D 2019

Design

Fixed vertical curves with low/high points — Civil 3D users can define a new type of fixed vertical curve in an alignment profile by specifying a high or low point, enabling them to start the profile design from a specific point. For example, if a road has a low point (such as for a box culvert) and that low point will control the design of the whole road, that point can be used to define a vertical curve. This feature allows users to develop the rest of a design from a known point and adhere to that design constraint throughout their design process.

Rail cants supported in Subassembly Composer — Rail subassemblies created in Subassembly Composer now have the ability to read the cant that has been calculated on the alignment and then use those cant values to build a corridor that accurately reflects the calculated cant.

Drawing Production

Batch saves — Multiple drawings and template files can be opened and saved to the latest versions of Civil 3D using the Autodesk Batch Save Utility. Custom scripts can also be included in the batch operation, such as a script for drawing cleanup that runs the PURGE and AUDIT commands on every drawing. This feature can be an enormous time-saver when moving a project to a newer version of Civil 3D, eliminating the need to individually open, save, and perform cleanup for the hundreds or thousands of drawings in a project. In addition, it runs outside of the Civil 3D software environment and therefore doesn’t slow down ongoing production.

Drawing comparison — The new AutoCAD DWG Compare feature identifies and visually displays the differences between two drawings. Objects that were modified, added, or removed are displayed in a new comparison drawing using different colors to highlight the differences.

Collaboration and Data Exchange

Import InfraWorks roads as Civil 3D corridors — Component roads imported from InfraWorks will automatically become Civil 3D corridors of simple assemblies and subassemblies. This expands the interoperability between InfraWorks and Civil 3D and strengthens the connection of BIM processes on infrastructure projects.

Shared views — The Shared Views tool provides a quick and simple way to share models and drawings in the cloud. Anyone can view and comment on the shared view by using a free Autodesk account, even if they do not have an Autodesk product installed.