But why was AutoCAD chosen as the foundation for Civil 3D? Dan Simeone – Civil Product Manager at Autodesk – gives us the answer: ‘ We chose AutoCAD as our foundation because the need to deliver 2D submittal documents was absolutely critical and we didn’t see this changing in the near term. The reason why the interface is so similar is that Civil 3D was built upon AutoCAD.

Now if you have seen people working on AutoCAD and Civil 3D, you may think that they are pretty much the same thing. This is, in fact, the key difference between Civil 3D and AutoCAD – Civil 3D has the added benefit of allowing you to efficiently produce BIM Level 2 compliant designs and models. It was probably not a coincidence that this happened while the Government were requiring public infrastructure projects to be BIM Level 2 compliant. It was around 2015 when Civil 3D started becoming popular in the UK for civil design and drafting. And yet it took another five years for businesses and corporations to realise its benefits. It took Autodesk another five years to develop Civil 3D into a really helpful tool for engineers. But the original software was far from perfect. Civil 3D, however, is a much younger product. How long has Civil 3D been around?Īs we mentioned in a previous post, AutoCAD has been in the market since 1982.

This article will help you identify the key differentiators, and which one may be best for you. Civil engineering and construction professionals often ask the question, what’s the difference between Civil 3D and AutoCAD? They are very similar in some respects but so different in many others.

Autocad civil engineering