Civil 3D Apps & Add-ons

The best surveyor add-on is sinc-pac from quuxsoft.com. The best $500 we ever spent.?ÿ

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My organization has the Kobi/PPI Toolkit, since we are a multidiscipline outfit. Has a variety of tools that benefit both our engineers and surveyors. Sinc-pac is the probably best for surveyors, but the Kobi toolkit is a pretty good all-around tool.

@wa-id-surveyor so is that a one time purchase or $500 annually? also can it roll over to be used with each new version of C3D?

@ncsudirtman

They have a very generous upgrade program depending on how many versions of Civi3d/Sincpac you are moving up.?ÿ We typically upgrade about every 3 years at about half the price of a full version. All their pricing is readily available on their website eliminating the pushy salesman discussion.

@rover83 i googled them but they're not quite as descriptive as the other site. care to elaborate on what helps the engineers by chance? and will it roll over with each new version of C3D?

I also use sinc-pac.

autodesk tried to hire Sinc.?ÿ ?ÿ(RIP 2012)?ÿ

Its a must have if you make a living doing this

@tickmagnet Definitely very sad to lose him so suddenly at such a young age. Though only an online acquaintance, I had a ton of respect for the guy.

I've similarly been intrigued by some of the apps from the Civil 3D store, but no, I've never tried any of them. It may not hurt to try to contact a publisher like Red Tangent to ask if they have a trial version of a pricy add-on.

@ncsudirtman

Our civils use the grading and alignment tools often, and the pipe tools are pretty good from what I understand.?ÿ

As a surveyor I make use of the grading when I have to build sites from CAD files that don't have any 3D entities, prior to construction staking.

I am pretty sure it rolls over with each version, since we are continually upgrading and have multiple versions on our machines. I have C3D 2016, 2018, 2019, and 2020 on mine....

@wa-id-surveyor

+1 I use at least one of the tools in this add on daily.

I have purchased a couple of smaller apps, including White Mountain CAD's 'Extract Point to Block', for specific tasks.?ÿ I have not been totally impressed.

Thanks for everyoneƒ??s feedback. Iƒ??ve got 2019 & 2020 C3D On both my desktop & laptop and at this point so Iƒ??m debating on whether some of the add ons would be worth it. Occasionally some of the point data import/export stuff sounds like it would be worthwhile as well as the routines that deal with the pipe networksƒ?? adjustments & conversions. The grading features really intrigue me too TBH as I do a few Topcon Pocket 3D surface models each year for rough grading?ÿ

I'll throw out one more option that is not a part of the C3D Store. It's called DotSoft. I've never used it, but it would be an alternative to Sincpac, which I also have never used. For the most part, C3D handled 99.9% of what I would do on a day to day basis, which is why I have no experience with these third party applications. It all depends on what routines may be helpful to you, but ceteris paribus, even though Sincpac is more expensive, Sinc himself was awesome, and has awesome people carrying on his work.

@blitzkriegbob

We have Dotsoft.?ÿ The Legal Reader and Writer programs made the purchase worthwhile for us.?ÿ They quickly answer questions and get to fixing them (the settings for the legal Writer do not seem to hold 3 decimal places--a big deal for us Canucks, but not so much for my American friends).?ÿ The average points routine is also useful.?ÿ We have [REDACTED], so we haven't used its coordinate translation routine but I could see how that would be useful to many.?ÿ Truthfully, we've just begun to scratch the surface w/ it.?ÿ Happy w/ the $200 USD purchase so far.

I've used this one in the past:

https://apps.autodesk.com/CIV3D/en/Detail/Index?id=4889238536667051647&appLang=en&os=Win64

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The biggest issue w/ the apps is if they keep up to date w/ each new version of C3D.?ÿ Some have been worth it, some were merely "meh," and some I uninstalled as they bogged things down.?ÿ The stock C3D is pretty decent (at least, from a design perspective.?ÿ I have a love/hate relationship w/ anything Autodesk for reasons I won't get into w/ this thread).

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Red Transit's Lot Grading Tool looks nice.?ÿ Dunno if it looks $600 nice.?ÿ For cut/fill/grading calcs/plans, I always did something similar w/ C3D:

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1. Alignment/profile file is its own file

2. Corridor file for the roads as its own file w/ its own corridor surface.?ÿ I went up to the ROW limits w/ the corridor.?ÿ Near the end of my stint in the civil department, we were making assemblies that had the curb, granulars, and different asphalt types.?ÿ Next on the list was outputting that automatically for tender generation using the Takeoff routines.?ÿ Ran out of time for that, unfortunately.

3. FL along all the lots in another file.?ÿ Have them automatically grab their elevation off the corridor (ie. have the lot line FL extend into the corridor 1/2").?ÿ The rear elevation at the match line you punch/snap it as that one shouldn't change.?ÿ In this file, you would either:

a. 2% 6m up to front of building envelope and then 2% down to rear swale

b. Use the C3D tool where you do 2% up and 2% back and it calcs the point?ÿ

4. Grading tools along those lot lines to model swales (sometimes in its own file, sometimes not; if it was, I would have a corridor, swale, and "pretty to plot" grading files).

5. House envelopes have 3 surfaces w/ a label that takes elevations from each surface (TFDN 0.5" inside the polyline of the house building envelope; house polyline layer used as a boundary for all 3 surfaces).

a. TFDN (manually set this 6" higher than the highest swale grade)

b. Garage cut (this is slight smaller than the TFDN surface and is an offset elevation.?ÿ You float it as needed from a minimum of -0.2m to, ideally, a max of -0.35m as this means you have 2 steps in the garage and no landing as per building code up here).?ÿ Just change the offset if you need to change the garage cut.?ÿ Garage cut surface placed 2" inside TFDN surface

c. USF (this was set to be automatically 8' or 9' + 6" footing lower than TFDN--whatever the client wanted or depending on how deep we could put the SAN main).?ÿ Make the surface 0.5" in from TFDN surface

6. Grading file that was the "pretty plot" file.?ÿ Depending on size, this was sometimes the lot grading file or separated out.

7.?ÿ Cut/fill file.?ÿ Make an FG surface, FG - 6" for subgrade (ie. FG - topsoil), pregrade surfaces, pipe spoils, etc.?ÿ Chuck in the USF surfaces for balancing cut/fill.?ÿ A boatload of "Assumptions for Calculations" in the plots given to clients.

8. Ex Surface file from the topo (could also put in the Ex. - topsoil surface derived from the geotech borehole reports in this file)?ÿ

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A little bit of a Swiss watch, but it would let you "play w/ the numbers" pretty quickly and through multiple scenarios.?ÿ We would data-shorcut things in here, there, everywhere as needed.?ÿ For corridors, I *never* had Sites in the file.?ÿ It would *always* magically delete FL's w/ no way to recover them if there were multiple Sites.?ÿ Made for a really poop day the time that it happened.?ÿ I would make backup copies of files in the am, at lunch, and end of day after that.?ÿ The randomly generated parcels in the corridor files were also a........nice........touch (side note--have a separate parcels file for your legal stuff).?ÿ Finally tamed the C3D2018 beast for civil grading.?ÿ Then I joined the geomatics department.?ÿ Such is life.

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You definitely will already have your own method so take that as the ramblings of the senile ;)?ÿ?ÿ

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@jaccen

a lot of respect for the level of detail in which you broke out your response. Thank you for all of that! Do have a question though... can you better explain the acronyms TFDN & USF by chance? My apologies on the confusion but again I am very intrigued by the methods you have described

@ncsudirtman

Sorry, got busy w/ work (though, I imagine I'm "preaching to the choir" on this forum in that regard).

Also, that was a boo-boo on my part.?ÿ I should know better and define terms.

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Top of FounDatioN (TFDN)

UnderSide of Footing (USF)

Garage CuT (GCT)

I created a label to reference the 3 surfaces of TFDN, USF, and GC.

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/civil-3d-forum/lables-for-multiple-surfaces/td-p/7277340

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Some other common terms on our civil side:

Finished Floor Elevation (FFE)

Lot Grading Plan (LGP)

Surveyor's Real Property Report (SRPR)

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In regards to the design, we use the following documents in our area:

https://london.ca/sites/default/files/2020-11/2019_Design_Specifications_and_Requirements_Manual_%28Entire_Document%29.pdf

Specifically of interest likely for you would be Section 9.2 and 9.4 for ponding/slopes/elevations/etc. and Figure 1 for cross-section on a corridor in Civil3D (C3D).?ÿ We used Figure 1 for one of our corridor assemblies.

We based most of our road assemblies on this document:

https://london.ca/sites/default/files/2020-09/Complete%20Streets%20Design%20Manual.pdf

Page 13 for an illustrated example of a cross-section.?ÿ Chapter 4 has most of the other ones.

We also have the Ontario Provincial Standards Drawings (OPSD) which we reference for other assemblies:

http://www.roadauthority.com/Standards/?Id=A06DF85D-85F4-447C-A718-57BE3A4F0609

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Section 600 has all the curb types.?ÿ We have assemblies made up of all of them.?ÿ Super useful when doing parking lots or small sites.?ÿ Create the rough grading w/ featurelines and then place the curb of choice on the exterior.?ÿ You can also add the sidewalk if needed.?ÿ If it's on the wrong side, just reverse the direction of the featureline and regen the corridor.?ÿ Once you start that, then you can make retaining walls, etc. Much less buggy than grading tools, but in Autodesk fashion, they're still buggy.?ÿ Mucho parcels happen when you use a lot of corridors.?ÿ The subdivision example attached spontaneously spawned over 100 of them.

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I imagine your local municipality has numerous examples you could tailor to your design/modeling.?ÿ

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Trimmed examples attached.?ÿ Note the plans are the copyright of my employer and if they or the client want them removed, I will gladly do so.?ÿ Note that this subdivision was large enough we could only do the Final Grade (FG) surface (ie. no granular, etc. for take-offs).?ÿ The

site plan one was my 3rd attempt using corridors so it also only used FG.

Using those standard assemblies resulted in savings on the survey side, too.?ÿ After talking w/ our engineering side, we learned that:

1. They only really cared about Edge of Pavement (EP) and back of sidewalk.?ÿ These were their usual match in points along with the property line. If we actually shot those 2, they were happy.?ÿ We note the curb type, sidewalk width, take audit shots along the way and cut down on our number of shots.?ÿ H&V offsets used per the standards.?ÿ "Non-standard" cross-sections are shot individually.

2.?ÿ They were happy with RTK precision.?ÿ Thus, if a boulevard varies between 2% to 4%, we just average it at 3% for the sidewalk.?ÿ?ÿ

Thus, implementing this was acceptable:

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Please note that none of my posts are professional or otherwise advise on how to design a project.?ÿ They are merely entertaining posts as to some possible methods I use.

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Side note--it's sometimes quite illustrating to see how other municipalities/countries do their design/survey work.?ÿ I've found the USA

IRC to be a great resource.?ÿ BC's illustrated guides are also great for energy-efficient house design:

https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/farming-natural-resources-and-industry/construction-industry/building-codes-and-standards/guides/climatezone5-7a.pdf

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Let's you think of alternative methods and modify your own if beneficial/allowable.

Site example included here due to the 5MB limit.

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@jaccen you sir get a gold star or a virtual beer (whichever you prefer) for your level of effort & detail in your previous comments. I'm going to have to re-read through it all once or twice more to digest better but I do greatly appreciate it all!!