I told you that I loved you and you said, "That is good."
I called you my darlin' and thought I always would.
But, now you've gone and left me and I don't know where you're at
You done stomped on my heart and mashed that sucker flat.
You Done Stomped on My Heart
Mason Williams
OK, enough of my inclination to make this some sort of morbid requiem . . . this was a professional relationship and therefore, it will be best handled by dissecting it with the modern phenomenon called an exit interview to determine what went wrong. For better or worse, the primary focus of my professional career over the last 3 ½ years is now effectively over. I have to deal with the reality that last Thursday, I likely fired up Civil 3D with the intent of creating production drawings for the last time. Certainly there is a possibility of a different firm just waiting to exploit my Civil 3D talents, but for a variety of reasons I think this is unlikely at least for some time and herein is my purpose in writing this. At least one Autodesk reseller if not Manchester and Autodesk corporate would seem to agree if this quote (taken with permission) is any indication.
What we are finding is that Civil 3D isn't really getting strong backing (in terms of hiring/training) for the same reasons Revit didn't... the lack of economic benefits being strongly pushed. In other words, we need clients that demand that type of deliverable. Revit use is exploding because the GSA and a variety of clients are starting to demand the benefits. The good news is that it looks like Civil 3D use (and users) will be in high demand in the next couple years, unfortunately that's obviously..well... 1-2 years from now. So much like Revit before it Civil 3D is slowly expanding in the market and is widely known to be software that will really explode in the marketplace, but it's a matter of time for the client (often government agencies) to really start pushing for it.
I saw this constantly while trying to implement Civil 3D, but it is not only the clients who are failing to embracing this new design software concept. In reality, I submit the designers are the ONLY group really pushing for full implementation. Civil 3D is a designer’s dream come true even with all the pimples and halitosis each new release either ignores or introduces. It is certainly no boon for the entry level drafting staff because the construction documents can be 90% complete most of the way through the design process leaving precious little work for anyone with no design responsibility.
The other group, the ones that Autodesk THINKS have bought into the Civil 3D concept, is the senior engineers and principals who are making all of the pertinent decisions regarding purchase, implementation and training. They couldn’t care less that this tool completely spoils the design staff by doing much of the tedious work for them and continuously keeps the drawings current with the design. This group is anything but on board and Civil 3D seems to do every conceivable thing to sabotage its own case with them. Still, even now in it’s sixth incarnation, there are very few things that can be taken that last 10% to full completion within the program and still show all of the annotation and detail in the format that they who affix their professional certification to, the reviewing agencies who specify and verify compliance with design criteria of, the contractors who have to correctly interpret along with the customer who is financially responsible for all of the design documents produced. EACH of these groups have valid reasons for demanding the documents be produced in the format agreed to by all parties and Civil 3D can not yet do this completely within the program. The claim that software limitations currently prevent any deviation is NOT an acceptable excuse.
Civil 3D can come tantalizingly close now with the ability to edit parts of the label text, but whenever the design modifies a labeled element, those edits are lost which can lead to some embarrassing moments when previously cleared comments revert to their former state later in the review process. Worse, as designers rely more on the dynamic updating, the assumption grows that everything actually is working as intended and the design is current when it most certainly is not so. It is quite easy to break the dynamic link between say, a surface and a set of profiles with no obvious visible clue that this has occurred, leaving structures vulnerable to be fabricated and delivered with tops at bad elevations - PRECISELY the situation dynamic design ties were intended to prevent.
Good training can limit many of the roadblocks to a successful implementation, but a lot of the guys making the decisions just don’t accept that reality. There is a solution that is still viable that in some very important ways is superior to the replacement and spending more and taking more days out of production just to start becoming effective with an unproven upstart. Many of these guys actually talk to each other and Civil 3D’s reputation has now been established. It is not an enviable one.
The grand results – from the project manager’s view, this software:
A. Is expensive to buy
B. Requires a massive shift in workflow to be efficient
C. Mandates initial and ongoing training for production staff
D. Changes skin every year and takes at least 3 months before hitting the floor
E. Is impossible to collaborate with any software other than the identical Civil 3D
F. STILL needs to be checked and double checked for errors
G. Cannot produce on its own a complete document set meeting the required formats
Even more damning, within this business climate, many engineers are cutting staff and intending to take up the slack by running the CAD engines themselves. Most of them have put in significant time with more traditional design software and can at least make do on their own through the tough times. At the very least, they know what their old software can do and how to work around the things that it can’t. For the reasons above, there is zero incentive on their part to retrain themselves regardless of any benefit in doing so. Since the new and the old don’t work and play nice together, almost universally the new kid is going down the road kicking rocks.
Much of the functionality of Civil 3D is lost on the guys who ultimately write the checks and this is why Revit has found more acceptance than I expect Civil 3D to ever garner. Architects like a bit of their own flair embedded in every design. An engineer simply wants a document that is complete, correct and can be interpreted and built with little or no further input from him. The concept of applying a visual style to an object and using that to create a design document will have an engineer’s eyes glassed over in minutes and even though there is some benefit in presentation abilities, those things don’t make it into the field for construction. Civil 3D is in many ways a solution to a problem the engineer either doesn’t have or can find another way around and arguably causes as many problems as it solves.
As the designer that I am though and in testimony to how hopelessly I have fallen for its charms, I have a trial copy that I can continue to mess with, tweak fiddle and prod at my leisure. I will keep my skills current and education ongoing in hopes that I am wrong. If only the guys writing the checks were so driven and motivated . . . and had reason to be so.
