Need Landscape CAD

March 30, 2006 12:08 PM

CAD for 3d sitework recomendations, please.

I need to do the following: from an existing 2d siteplan, including contours, roads, lots and house-pads, as well as the elevation of each element, create a 3d model of the whole shebang. I need to do cut and fill analysis of the lots and pads, as well as generate longitudinal and transversal sections of everything.
I have been trying to do this with Civil 3d 2006, but find it (as par for Autodesk) buggy, inconsistent, with hidden 'features' 5 or 6 menu levels down and generally an unpleasant fellow to deal with. I have tried Vectorworks but it seems too basic for what I'm looking for. I thought of Land Desktop, but it doesn't seem to do grading to a feature line at all, only to a contour (I would gladly be proved wrong on this).
I need an application which will let me at the very least:
1- modify existing contours with a proposed road, given its centerline and spot elevations.
2- model the surface of lots and building pads, given spot elevations (the lots themselves will be graded, and the pads on top of that).
3- generate sections of everything.
4- calculate cut/fill and total retaining-wall areas.

I know quite a bit of CAD and do not mind using 6 different programs to acomplish this, but am a bit stumped right now.

posted by signal to computers & internet (3 comments total)

I thought of Land Desktop, but that's just becasue that's what our Civils use, and I really have no familiarity with it. Do you have any civil engineers you can call up and ask for advice? I know for certain some of them can do items 2-4 with their programs--those are easy--but I don't know precisely how they do it. Modifying an entire feature like a road--that's tough.
posted by LionIndex at 1:41 PM on March 30, 2006

You might want to check out some of the civil apps for Revit. On a current project, our civil engineers have modeled and modified a fairly complex site using benchmarks and spots within Revit, but my personal familiarity is limited. Revit will do 1-3 easily, but I am not sure about #4. It is an Autodesk product, so it is easily integrated with 3DS (not sure if that would help) or Acad. Acad2006 is able to calculate volumes from 3D AEC objects, so that might solve #4.

Also, I second contacting a civil engineer in your area.
posted by Benway at 5:01 PM on March 30, 2006

Benway: I hadn't thought of Revit. I'll look into that, thanks.
posted by signal at 8:24 PM on March 30, 2006