I'm in the process of doing a clean Windows reinstall on my workstation. Since I need to reinstall everything, I figure it is a good time to change Civil3D versions. I'm currently running 2020 on the workstation and 2021 on my laptop. Has anyone out there gone to 2024 and if so, is it stable?
How about 2025, it looks like it will still be using the 2018 drawing format. The coordinate manager looks a lot nicer.
I used C3d 2024 until last week. It is perfectly stable. I loaded 2025 last Monday and it seems to be fine also. It is seemlessly working with the drawings I had in progress.
The major virtue of 2024 was native support for the OCRS zones - which, of course, continues in 2025.
I am subscribed to the weekly Civil 3D What is the Autodesk Civil Infrastructure Product Team Working On? webinars. It looks like the 2026 version will still be using the 2018 format. My company does CAD consulting. One of our clients is transitioning to Civil 3D and we are going to recommend they start with 2025.
I'm leaning towards 2025 (99.9%). My main concern was compatibility with my clients and stability. For some reason I thought I had heard 2025 would have a new file format which would be a real pain in the A.... Nothing worse than having to worry about what release different clients were on because C3D was not compatible from year to year.
Historically the releases on even years are quite "buggy".
That was certainly true at one time. IMO they have broken that cycle over the last several releases.
Yeah I really don't remember the last time I would have called any release of AutoCAD "buggy".
Not sure which decade that comment is related to, but now their software is just a continual update. You can see that by the actual product number and why they are still using dwg format 2018. And why very much is backwards compatible, because each year naming isn’t really a majorly updated program. What I find is that each year the program gets slightly faster and more responsive.
They are backwards compatible util they are not. The CAD portion is always backward (but not forward) compatible, it is the C3D data that is sometimes not. It may have been a decade ago, but there was time when I had to have multiple versions on my machines because various large engineering firms I worked for were not all on the same page. The versions all used the same AutoCAD DWG file format, just not the same C3D objects. This really has not been a problem in quite a while, but at one point I had heard that 2025 would have a new DGW format.
Anyway, my question was more on stability. I went ahead with 2025 yesterday. I guess I will find out soon enough.
2026 still using 2018 dwg format? That means Autodesk is in a “minimal improvement mode” with civil 3D but still raking in massive money from subscription requirements
If you have 2025 use it. Its significantly faster in opening and closing files.
