Maximizing Efficiency of Projects with Civil 3D: Know When to Hold 'em, Know When to Fold 'em

JEREMY ROGERS: Maximize efficiency in Civil3D. We're going to talk about today, knowing when to hold them, knowing when to fold them. Let's talk about when to fold the design by saying, hey, man, that's far enough. We've gone. We've taken the design where it needs to go. Let's just fold our hand and let's move forward. Or when is the time to actually hold on to it? Let's put the effort up front now to save ourselves some headaches on down the line.

My name is Jeremy Rogers. I'm a project manager at Kimley-Horn. I'm going to give you a little bit of introduction about myself. And I know you're not here to listen to my whole biography, or to learn a whole lot about me, but I want to give you a background of where I came from to where I'm at now so that you understand where my thought process is and where I'm coming from.

So I started here in the Civil Engineering industry back in 2000. I worked for a big corporation at the time, I worked for them for about seven years. And then I went to a smaller firm, mom and pop shop of about six to seven employees. And then took kind of a sabbatical from engineering. And I got back into engineering the last 10 years here at Kimley-Horn and Associates. We're a company of about 8,500 plus employees at the time.

But it just goes to show that I've worked in the corporate setting, I've worked in the smaller shops, and now I'm back in the corporate setting helping train people. I started out my career as a beginning, just a drafter. Not just a drafter, I was a drafter, CAD technician. And I progressed up to designer and senior designer. And now I'm a project manager with Kimley-Horn. So I've worked my way up, and now I just oversee projects.

Here at Kimley-Horn, I've been the regional coordinator overseeing about 19 or 20 offices across the state of Texas to make sure that we're staying efficient, make sure that we're staying productive. Just making sure everything's going on down the line. I'm also an adjunct professor at a local community college, Austin Community College there in Austin, Texas. It's a way for me to give back to engineering, but it's also a way for me to bring interns into our firm and give them a lucrative career that they so well deserve. I bring real world applications into the classroom to help our students understand exactly what they're getting into when they get into this industry.

So as you can tell, I've started out the career beginning drafter all the way up to senior designer to project manager, where my focus starting out was red lines, making sure that we got the plan sets created. Then my next focus was the design, making sure the design was intact. And then senior designer making sure that we're being efficient, we're staying under budget. And now as a project manager, that is my main goal, to make sure all of these key things take place, that we're staying under budget, and we're maximizing our efficiency in Civil3D.

So a little bit of an agenda of what we're going to cover today. We're going to start out, hey, when do we keep it simple? Let's talk about knowing again, when to fold. That's far enough in our design. Let's just keep it simple in our design. We don't need to take this any further.

Then we're going to talk about when to actually model, when it's time to hold on to that design. Let's put forth that effort right now. It's not going to cause us headaches on down the line. And then we got to know when to go all in, when we just got to put all of our cards on the table. When we got to just make sure that this design is solid, we're going to spend all the money up front because it's going to be either a digital delivery.

We've got to make sure that we're under a lot of eyes that are really focused on this design. So we need to know when to go all in on this design. And then we'll wrap it up with just a summary.

So let's start out. It's knowing when to hold them or knowing when to fold them again. Fold that design. Fold your hand. We've taken this design far enough, and just the benefits of keeping it simple in Civil 3D.

So Kimley Horn, we're growing at a rate of about 15% per year. So we get a lot of new hires coming in. You don't have to read this screen. I'll talk you through it. We get a lot of engineers and training or CAD technicians that are either straight out of school or they're two years into their career. These guys are hungry. They want to make the most out of their career. They want to do all the coolest features that Civil 3D has to offer. They want to do all the cool things we're doing here at AU. Learning what the future is and bringing all those things to the table. They're trying to make a mark in their world. They're coming in. They want to prove themselves to us, that they know exactly what they're doing.

But our job as senior people in the firms or even beginning CAD technicians in the firms, we must educate on the right way to make money while still holding on to that passion. We want them still to be passionate about what they're coming in and doing. We want them still to be passionate about Civil 3D. But let's educate them on the right way to make money.

And how do we do that? We educate them on when to use pipe networks or when a simple polyline is going to do the job. When should we actually take the time to do an alignment in a profile? Do we have to show that on the plans? Is this a 3D deliverable or does it really even matter how it looks in CAD? Are we really painting a picture on some construction documents? Those are the questions that we must ask ourselves starting out.

All of this really starts out with a good project folder, a good project template. We've got to be efficient. Like I said, we grow rapidly at Kimley-Horn, just like a lot of you guys are growing as well. You get a lot of new users coming in, so we've got to keep it simple from the start. And that starts out with plan sheets with viewports and legends, plan sheets with layer control that already implemented, base files that already have xrefs that are already overlaid into them.

So I want to show you a slide here of a typical project folder at my office. This is taken directly from my office. Ignore the list routines, ignore the executables. Let's focus on the DWG files right here. So if you focus on the left side of your screen, I've got some reference files.

As you can see, I have an O storm file, an O surface EG file, I have an O surface FG file, O wastewater, O water. And then get into some X files, X site, X storm, X wastewater. The reason that we have all these different files is, as a newer user comes in, they don't know, hey, do I draw this in 3D? Is this going to be an x ref? Do I draw this only in 2D? So we separated these files to help it become more efficient.

So our newer users know that, hey, in these O files, we're going to actually spend the time and draw the Civil 3D objects in there. In these X files, hey, a simple polyline is going to get me through the job. That's all I need to do.

Now, in the middle of the screen, I've got my sheet files listed. These files are already created-- the cover sheet, drainage area maps, paving details, paving plan and profiles. These are the basic sheet files that we need for every project that we have that we work on. Do we occasionally have to add more? Absolutely. We've got to add more files to this. We've got to add more sheet files. But this gets us started. This gets the base file.

And the goal is, the newer user comes in, they open up the erosion control plan. And to your right, when they open it up, you see the sheet file when they open it. The viewport is already set, so they simply double-click in the viewport to get into model space. Zoom extents, boom, everything's already X ref'ed in there. Your viewport is set. This sheet is already cut, pretty much.

Our legend is already in there. It's already created. It already matches what our layer control is in our base files. Our general notes, they're already set in here. Do we have to go back and edit them? Sure. Absolutely. However, it's easier to erase than for us to come in and add more. Occasionally, yes, we do have to add more notes, but it's a good base start to it. And then our title block is already in there.

What you don't see on this screen is typically our north arrow. And our bar scale is already set on the screen as well, so it's just addition to that. But the sheet files are already set. These guys are off and running. We can cut a set of construction plan sheets two to four hours for a simple site plan, six to eight hours for an overall single-family subdivision. We've already got the construction plans cut. The sheets are there. It's time to go back and annotate. We're maximizing our efficiency by taking this forward from the get-go.

So let's get into some of the site design things that will keep it simple for us. And the question is, do we network or not network? So as you look on this screen, the lines drawn in blue are water lines. The line drawn in green is the wastewater. So blue for water, green for wastewater. I've got some storm going on in here. And you must ask yourself the question, am I going to take the time to network this right now with structures, pressure networks, pipe networks, gravity networks? Ask yourself that question.

To me, in the scenario of this one, the answer is no. I am going to simply draw a polyline for my water line, a simple offset of that polyline five feet, another offset of that polyline. That gets me three water lines that are drawn in there. I've got my 45-degree angles set.

There's no need for me to spend the time up front to make sure all my structures are right, to make sure that all of my alignments are correct, to make sure that all of my pressure network matches exactly what we see on the screen. A simple polyline gets the job done.

And you're like, well, what about labels? I can't come in there and just click on it and say Add Label to a structure. No, you can't. But a simple M leader line drawn off of that 45-degree angle, you're done. You copy that over three or four times, this sheet is done. We're off and running. So you're asking yourself, what is my deliverable for this?

Is it a pretty picture that I'm painting just to show where the water's going to go? Absolutely. In this case, it is. Am I going to take the time to actually draw the gravity line of the wastewater, the green line right there? We've got some crossings, maybe a profile. Do I have to show that profile? In this scenario, no. It's a private lot.

But with those crossings, we all know that water is under pressure. So we're not having to profile and show any conflicts in this. The contractor can get out there and loop-the-loop these water lines if they need to be, but they can get around these crossings. There's no need, in this scenario, to spend the time up front to create these pressure networks, these gravity networks. Simple polylines get the job done in this scenario. Let's look at another one.

Here's another site plan. To network or not to network? Again, water lines in blue, green lines in-- or wastewater in green here. Simple polylines would get the job done, right? In this scenario, we've got to look at the bigger picture. We see some stubs going forward here, some stubs going forward here, some more stubs going forward here. That tells me there's multiple phases that are coming to this site plan.

I am absolutely going to take the time to come in and draw the pressure network, or create the pressure network. I'm absolutely going to take the time to come in, create this gravity network, because later on down the line, it's going to save me so much more headaches. I can go back in quickly and figure out what my invert elevation was, where I left off. I've got multiple phases to this retail shopping center. We've got about eight buildings that are going into this project.

So yes, it is time to create the networks for this system, the storm network for this system. You don't see it on this sheet, but the storm network is there. We need to see where those crossings are. Am I going to take the time to profile it?

Probably internally, but I'm not going to take the time to make my profiles look very perfect, with labels and all these different things that go into a profile that you're going to present to a municipality. I am going to take the time to profile it so that I can see my crossings, but nothing to make it pretty. Just a quick, simple profile so that we can see, on the site, exactly what's going on. So in this situation, yes, we're going to take the time to network.

Let's look at a third scenario, single-family subdivision. Are we going to network or are we not going to network? We are 100% going to network this one. With single-family subdivisions, there is so much that goes into these entities. I don't know if I explained to you guys, I do a lot of commercial plans. I do a lot of site plans. I do a lot of single-family plans. I cover it all in the civil world.

When it comes to the single-family subdivisions, they can get monotonous at times, absolutely. But we have to spend that time up front to design these things, because it's going to create less headaches moving on down the line. We are going to take the time to network this one. We have to show profiles. We have to show our crossings. There's a lot of detail that goes into these types of designs. We are 100%, absolutely going to spend that time up front.

So we talked about the simplicities of Civil 3D. Now, let's talk about some of the benefits of the complexities of Civil 3D, knowing when to hold on to that design, knowing when, hey, we've got our cards in our hands. Let's spend that time up front, now, so that later on, we're going to make our life easy.

But sometimes, we do keep it simple. To grade or not to grade is the question with this scenario. Here, we have that simple site plan again. We've got a building, we've got a parking lot coming in here, a median, some ponds over here. We hand this to a beginning EIT person or a beginning CAD technician, they're like, oh, man, this is so cool. I can come in, I can do some corridors, I can do some really cool grading objects in the pond back there. I can probably come in here and 3D model this fire tank, 3D model this truck wash-out bay.

The answer is slow down, my friend. Yes, we can do all these things. We go to a senior designer. The senior designer, he looks at this-- he or she looks at this, and they're going to say, you know what? "Name that tune" kind of style. I can knock this out in eight feature lines. And that's exactly what I did. More than eight feature lines, yes.

However, there is no need to come in 3D model splitter boxes or fire tanks or wash out areas when simple feature lines are going to get the job done. There is no need to use corridors in any aspect of this design right here. Simple feature lines are going to get the job done. Simple updating the face of curb and then a step offset your feature line to the back of curb-- easily done.

You can see the orbital view over here. There's not much that went into this grading, but there was some that went into it that it was enough to feature line, that we did have to grade it to show our contours, to make sure we get some sort of detail as we're moving forward.

Another scenario. To grade or not to grade? Another simple site plan. This is a daycare, a private school. We've got a simple parking lot going on over here. We've got a administration building right here, daycare center-- actually, it's a private school-- going in right here. Playground, gymnasium. Fire lane coming in, looping around.

To grade or not to grade? Are we going to spend the time to create any corridors, or are we going to get this done with 8 to 10 feature lines again? In this scenario, it was worth it for me to spend the time up front to create the corridor. As you can see, in this main drive aisle, I created some assemblies down here.

The reason being, it is a uniformed drive aisle. I'm not shifting and shaping any kind of models right here. I have a uniform drive aisle. I've got some parallel parking up here at the top, I don't know if you saw that on the previous slide. Some parallel parking going in right here, that it's all uniform. So it's worth the time coming in, building a corridor off this feature line to uniformly grade this site as we go through.

So now, all I have to do is update the center line of this site. Everything else updates as it happens. Well, since I've already come in and done corridors for it for this off a feature line, why not go the extra step over here in this parking area and in this parking area? What I did was I created a face of curb feature line using this assembly right here, just for the curb. So anytime I came in and had to update the face of curb, the back of curb already updated for me.

So if I took the time to come in and do a corridor for this one-- yeah, let's go ahead and take the time to come in and do the corridor for this one. We come in here, we've got some splitter boxes or some [INAUDIBLE] going in. Is it worth the time and money to invest right now for that those outlet structures?

To me, the answer is no. We've got details of those outlet structures. Apologize for not having the detail on the screen right now, but we've got details for those outlet structures that come into play, that they will show the details of, that we don't have to spend the time to come in and 3D model those right there.

Over here in this parking lot, did I use any corridors? The answer is no. Maybe along this face of curb over here I did again, just to get that back of curb. But the beauty of site designs and the beauty of asphalt and concrete is we can manipulate that concrete how we want it to go. Simple spot shots are going to get us what we need. This is not a 3D deliverable.

This is not anything that had to be pretty in CAD. We needed to paint a pretty picture on a sheet file with spot grades, so it's more efficient to come in with a uniform corridor along this line and then just simple feature lines for the rest of it. Simple feature lines of our pond. We graded in some headwalls back here in just a make sure our three-to-one slopes work. Simple feature lines got the job done in these scenarios.

To detail or not to detail? Let's talk a little bit more about some single-family design. A lot goes into these single-family designs. We've got our alignments, our corridors, our profiles. We've got intersections, we've got knuckles, we've got cul-de-sacs. Do we spend the time up front to come in and model all those different things?

Well, the answer is yes and no. Do we grade in the intersections from day one? Are we having to detailed lot grade this entire subdivision right now, or can we get away with some block grading ? So the answer when it comes to is not if we're going to detail. It's when we're going to detail these things out.

In this situation, starting out, yes, we take the time to build these corridors, because we've got to have our profiles off to the side showing our paving profiles. We take the time to build these corridors because it's a uniform parabolic crown going along these local roads. Did I take the time up front in starting to do my intersections?

No. Things change. We don't need to come in and 3D model our intersections from the very get-go. Let's save those 3D-- those scenarios for the detail about our third submittal to the city, when we're about to get our permit from the city. Those are the times we really need to go heavy on the detail. We don't need to do that up front.

We want to make sure that our corridors are set, that our roads are good, so that we can get some good dirt numbers. We can come in later in the game and create these intersections. We can come in later in the game to create these knuckles. Yeah, I'm doing some simple feature lines around these knuckles right now, doing a couple of simple corridors around there just to get myself up to par on these details. But I'm not taking the time to fully 3D model these knuckles or these cul-de-sacs until we're further down the line.

Look over here. You see my contours coming in through here? This is just a block grading. My first submittal is probably going in like this. You're like, Jeremy, your grading looks horrible. That's fine. They're not judging me on my grading right now. I'm getting a good dirt number. I'm getting a good base.

The municipality, the city, may come back and say, hey, your lot over here is off. We need you to tweak that. Or we don't like this street here. We need you to move that street. It would take me more time and effort to go back and redo all those streets if I did all that design up front than if I do the minimal design right now. Second, third submittal, then we take the time to come in and really 3D model these things.

Speaking of grading, here was the final product of this. We did come back in. We did model the intersection. Did come back in, I did model my knuckles. I did model my cul-de-sacs over here. You can't really see it very well. But look at the interior between these two blocks. In this scenario, the developer came in and said, I don't know who's going to buy these homes just yet. I don't know who's going to buy these lots just yet.

So I just had to do some block grading. I had some spot shots going on in the background to make sure everything was happening. In fact, in this scenario right here, I had some spot shots showing me the slopes to making sure everything was going to happen so that when I came back to this design right here, I knew exactly that I was going to get my 2% across my lots, or 4%, or whatever the developer's criteria might be.

Once we get this to the developer, once the developer goes out there and they start doing their earthwork, they start doing their design, then they sell this off to a home builder. The home builder is going to come back to us, and then we're going to have to detail lot grade these based upon what the home builder's criteria is.

So we've got to check our scope. What does our scope say that we have to do? Do we block grade now, do we detail lot grade now? In some scenarios, it's not when you're going to detail-- or it's not if you're going to detail, it's when you're going to detail. We are not fully grading this out until we're getting close to permit.

Let's look at some other designs. Here's a multi-family site. This multi-family site was pretty tricky. We had a lot of walls going on, had a lot of stairs going on. We had some spacing constraints where it was really causing some headaches and difficulties. We've got ADA to take care of, American Disability Act to take care of, when we're grading these multifamily sites. Those can be tricky.

2% cross slope, 5% slope going lengthwise. We've taken those into account. Are we spending the time up front to detail that out from day one? No. Let's get our earthwork in there. Let's get our feature lines in there. Let's get some simple corridors through these thoroughfares in there where we can. Let's build that out first. Let's wait until that second, third submittal before we are truly detailing out these stairs.

Why did I have to go in and detail out these stairs? Well, it was a 3D deliverable. The contractor wanted to make sure everything was working. Like I told you guys, we had some pretty space constraints with the architect to make sure everything was going to fit. So I ended up having to take the time about that second or third submittal to come in and actually detail out these stairs right here.

What about these walls? Let's talk about walls for a minute. When do we have to get those walls into place? Take this scenario into account. A lot of walls right here. Here's the actual construction site view of it. Down below is the 3D orbital view. Down below, do you guys think that's the first submittal or the third submittal right before permit?

The answer was first submittal. Why is that? Reason being, walls. We've got to get that contractor on board up front with these walls so that they're going to meet their criteria. Are these walls going to change as we go through our design? Yeah, probably. But let's at least get that wall contractor on board up front and early so that they know what they're up against as well, so that we're not holding them back with our submittal as we get into it.

So it's worth the time and effort right now to hold on to this design, to do it up front, so that we can get everybody else up and running. So we talked about some simplicity stuff. We talked about when to hold that design, when to actually go all in to that design right now. Now, let's actually get even further. When are we actually going to go all in on our design?

And the question you have to ask yourself is, would you spend $15,000 of your own money to create this now. And what do I mean by create this? At Kimley-Horn, we have a plethora of custom commands that we use in our Civil 3D. This is an actual screenshot of my Civil 3D application at work. We've got our own ribbon tab. You see that KHA-FW, meaning Kimley-Horn Firm-Wide Tab. All of those are custom commands that we have.

I get asked all the time, Jeremy, hey, man, it'd be great if we had this command. It would make my life so much easier if we could create this command that would do this simple thing. My question back to them is, hey, that's a great idea. Are you willing to spend $10,000 to $15,000 of your own bonus money for us to go create this?

Sometimes, the answer's, yeah, man. I really think it would save me that much time. And then sometimes, the answer is, no way, dude, I'm not spending my own money to go create that. Well, then why should we spend the company's money to go create that? When is it time? Should we write that Dynamo script, should we write that LISP routine? Is it worth our time and money to create this?

If it's going to save us a couple of hours right now and it doesn't matter in the future what we just wrote or if we created that command, the answer is no. We don't need to spend the time and money and effort right now up front to create that.

If the answer is, yeah, it's going to save us a couple of hours right now on this, but it's going to save us millions of dollars in the future by creating this command and it's only going to take me five clicks to do this application versus the 20 to 30 clicks that it takes right now-- how many of us get the time-- or paid by the clicks that we make? Just kidding.

But is it worth that time right now to spend to where it's going to save us a lot of money on down the line? If the answer there is yes, 100%, let's get into it. Let's create that. Let's create the Dynamo routine. Let's create the LISP routine. Let's do the .NET experience. Let's make the time and effort to make that happen.

To create or not to create? I have a guy that sits up in our Twin Cities office. His name is Andy Bosch. He loves his conditional corridors, his conditional assemblies. Up in this top right corner-- or top left corner right here, this is one assembly that he used for miles upon miles upon miles of roadway design that he did.

This guy is amazing when it comes to creating these things. He's spending that time up front to create these conditional assemblies because in the long run, down the road, it's going to save him so much time, so much headaches. In this scenario, we did go all in. We spent that up front 10 to 15 hours of creating these things. It probably doesn't take him that long. To me, it would probably take me a week to create what he just created right here nowadays, since I'm more project management side than the CAD side.

But we had to go all in, reason being, the agency's going to request some cross-sections. Every 50 feet, we're going to have to create this cross-section. Every 100 feet, we've got to show them a cross-section. Let's create it. This model is actually used in construction. This was an actual 3D deliverable that we had to give to the DOT, the Department of Transportation. They used the model for their design, for their construction.

Definitely had to spend the time, the effort up front to create these amazing, complex models, because it's going to save us time in the long run. Question being, though, when you are creating this, who are you training behind you that's going to be able to come in and take this over? Someday, Andy's going to retire. I think he told me five years. Good for him, man. He's still young. I love that.

But he's going to retire. He's going to go on vacation. He wants to take some time off with his family too. Who's going to come in and be able to manipulate this design? So as we're creating these things, we've got to take that simplicity into account as well. We've got to remember, hey, who's going to come in behind us to take over when we're not there that day? What if we're sick? What if we're out in the hospital for whatever reason? What If we are not there?

Who's going to be able to come in and take that time to take this over? Those are the questions we have to ask. But right now, 100%, absolutely worth the time to spend up front-- digital delivery. Agency required it. You had to use this model in construction.

So in summary, let's keep this simple. Let's encourage the passion. Again, we must educate on the right way to make money while we're still keeping this passion. What does my scope say to do? What does the design-- what needs to be shown? Does it require this detailed construction behind the scenes? Does CAD actually have to show all these details at the time? If the answer is no, let's fold. Let's fold our hand. That's far enough. Simple polylines are going to get the job done.

Are there chances for multiple conflicts in the drawing or construction? If so, then yeah, let's hold our hand. Let's get that design done up front. Is it worth building now, or am I going to struggle with it later? Who's going to pick up this design? Who's going to pick up this design while I'm on vacation? There will come a time when digital delivery must be exact. But we must ask our question-- is that today? Thank you.