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I’m excited to be getting into Civil 3d 2025, and I want to share a few of my favorite new features.

Lets take a look at the new ESRI Map options that we have available. This is included in the core AutoCAD Product, not just Civil 3d!

The 3 options on the left have been in AutoCAD for some time. The 5 on the right, are new. I really like the ESRI Open Street Map Option. It has a very familiar look for those of us who like the look of USGS Topo Maps.

Lets cover what most people are probably asking. “Can I get a better preliminary image for Early Phase design work”. I took two viewports, displayed the left with the current Bing Aerial Imagery, and on the right used the ESRI Imagery Option.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t look like a big improvement. 3rd Party sat image providers like Plex.Earth and Nearmap still look like very good options for this.

With the ESRI map options, I have seen this error more than once:

The Internet connection timed out or the map server is not responding.
Unable to capture an image at the specified location.

Keep this issue in mind. I didn’t see this issue when I was creating my GEOMAPIMAGE for the demo above, I was doing some more testing and seen this error above. While I was seeing this issue creating new GEOMAPIMAGE objects, existing ones continued to work.

I also saw these funky areas like below. On the right is the new Imagery option, and something very weird is going on here.

All tests done on Civil 3d 2025.01, I will update you if it works better in 2025.1.

Update – I just revised the dynamo script for better compatability with Dynamo Player. Check out the link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pcKvde-GYz4ZeIRX4LcOkAyCZQKJammu/view?usp=sharing

Creating cut/fill diagrams is often a pain in the neck. There isn’t a great way to share the schemes you come up with, creating them in the first place is a pain. There are several default schemes, but you can’t modify them! Don’t believe me – check the help! Editing color scheme for surface analysis in Civil 3D (autodesk.com) The title should really say you can’t do this! There is a tool in the country kits to share these, but it isn’t optimal.

Lets start by automating the creation of slope arrow analysis. I typically use this table below. I have included the reasoning for each color. Its nice to setup the Dynamo script with your own company standards, these become very useful when reviewing surfaces.

Take a look at the youtube video below to walk you through the process.

Here is a link to the Dynamo Script for that one: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UzcSLlsMEwZ5P3rpotEauLqISVB5D1q1/view?usp=drive_link

Next is elevation analysis for TIN volume surfaces. This is always a major time suck as it takes time to set this up and then you can’t re-use that again. It says so in the help document! Editing color scheme for surface analysis in Civil 3D (autodesk.com)

Here is a link for the Dynamo script for this one: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oJnTaruJq8FhiFl1yNJ2S-xV_lcoPvrC/view?usp=drive_link

These scripts are only possible with the excellent Camber Package for Dyanmo and Civil 3d. You will need to download this package, it will prompt you to do this when you open the script in dynamo. Here is more information on how to do this: https://primer.dynamobim.org/en/11_Packages/11-1_Introduction.html

If you improve on these scripts, please let me know. I’m always looking for ways to make things better!

With a large number of us working remote since the pandemic, there are some slowdowns that can happen. One issue I have seen in my organization is the time it takes to set the working folder when working through the VPN. If you are using a working folder structure that contains many folders to index, this can take a long time.

I will agree that my organizations working folder setup is suboptimal. With a project # of 12562, we set the working folder to P:\12000, requiring Civil 3d to index over 1,000 folders. With everyone in the office this took about 10 seconds to execute.

Working at home through the VPN this could take as long as 20 minutes. Here is a really boring video!

Enter the hero of our story, the new feature in Civil 3d 2024 ENABLEDSMULTITHREAD!

Setting ENABLEDSMULTITHREAD to ON had reduced this from about 20 minutes to about 10 seconds. That’s what I call a productivity boost!

I think everyone who learns to edit Civil 3d styles, learns to squint at the screen a bit because it is so hard to see clearly the current parameters when you are editing the Civil 3d styles.  We may be creating a generation of Engineers and CAD managers with bad vision due to this.

But there is an option to fix this, it’s a Windows feature called clear type.  We need to turn that off.  Press Start, and type in ‘CLEAR’ and select Adjust Cleartype Text.

You can also hold the Windows key on your keboard, press ‘R’, and type in CTTUNE.

It will come up with several prompts depending on how many monitors you have and ask you a series of “which one looks better” questions.

Look how much easier this is to read!

Lets compare this vs the original version.  Big difference.