Bobby del Rosario
You Asked, We Listened – Discover Civil 3D, InfraWorks, and ReCap Pro new releases
Rebuilding the world’s aging infrastructure has become a priority for many countries across the globe — and we at Autodesk understand that the role you play in these efforts is critical. That is why we are so excited to share the newest features and functionalities in the 2023 releases of Autodesk® Civil 3D®, Autodesk® InfraWorks®, and Autodesk® ReCap™ Pro.
The new capabilities and enhancements in these releases were inspired by you, our customers – these include advancements in automation and optimization, design efficiencies for pressurized utilities, rail, and civil structures design, and core performance improvements.
Your knowledge, ideas, and insights are indispensable to making our products serve you better. We invite you to continue helping us shape future releases – to do so, please sign up for the Autodesk Infrastructure Futures program.
Before we move on, we want to recognize that while, for many, the pandemic is slowly receding into the background of our daily lives, it continues to be a concern. Please take advantage of our COVID-19 portal to help you navigate the “next normal”.
Now, let’s show you why we’re excited about the latest and greatest tools that help you plan, design, and deliver your infrastructure projects.
Let’s start with Civil 3D 2023
Grading Optimization for Civil 3D
Grading Optimization was released to great fanfare for Civil 3D 2022. Since then, we have been busy making it even better with new functionality, including:
- Non-Colinear segments – This update gets rid of colinear feature lines, decreasing the number of feature lines a customer must manage, and reducing drawing instability.
- Help Center — This new interface provides users with assistance, including the Grading Optimization help system, basic workflow assistance, tutorials, and sample files.
- Notification Center — Here you can find information about the optimization process, including conflicts between constraints.
- Enhanced Convergence and Validation Graphs — These graphs help you monitor the progress and quality of the optimization. They have been enhanced to provide better visibility and more useful assistance during the optimization process.
- Enhanced Progress Bar — The progress bar now offers visual cues regarding the current stage of the optimization process.
Pressure Networks
These enhancements to Civil 3D 2023 are a direct response to suggestions from customers who work on path-based pressure network layout and editing workflows. The enhancements include:
- A “Search by Keyword” text to the pressure parts drop-down list, indicating that you can use it to search the list
- The ability to show the pressure/gravity network plan part’s property set data in a profile view label
- Profile editing improvements
- Reducing the number of PVIs on pipe run profile to just cut lengths and elbows
- Removing the Dynamic column from the Pipe Run Profile dialog
- Adding a Reference Profile to the Pipe Run Profile dialog
- Adding break cut lengths at PVIs
- Clarifying the tooltip for “Cleanup PVIs”
- Using default cut length from feature settings if no cut length is defined in the parts list
- Clarifying the “Unsupported Geometry” warning
Rail Switches and Crossings
Updates to Civil 3D 2023 make working on rail switches and crossings easier, as well as annotating critical cant and elevation data.
- US Catalogs and conversion script: If you are based in the U.S., you will be happy to hear that you can expand the Catalog Library to US. Along with the Basic US catalog there is a set of scripts for US catalog conversion.
- Cant Information label: A must-have according to customer feedback, this label lets you add alignment, cant, and profile information at any station on an alignment.
- Catalog replacement: You can now replace the existing catalog with a catalog bearing the same catalog name and unit if you had to modify it to fix an error, change a model, enhance a function, or upgrade a standard. You can add and remove models or modify a model’s parameters and values.
Additional Updates for Civil 3D 2023
- Corridor Solid Property Set: Provides additional Property Set data for Corridor Solids to satisfy BIM Mandates. Property Set data also dynamically updates with changes to the corridor.
- Corridor Targeting Efficiency: Allows filtering of target options, targeting multiple surfaces and dynamically targeting specific layers.
- Subassembly Composer: Now you can create an auxiliary curve object that is comparable to the existing Auxiliary Line and Auxiliary Point objects. Save function indicates when changes have been made to the assembly.
- Project Explorer: Add summaries to tables and quantities and customize row heights for tables.
Now let’s have a look at InfraWorks 2023
InfraWorks is used for data aggregation, context modeling, visually evaluating design concepts, and communicating design intent. In this release, we’ve delivered advancements to civil structures design and analysis processes.
Check for Parametric Content Updates
Prior to this release, managing updates to parametric content for bridge and tunnel design could be cumbersome, we know. In this release, users can now select parametric bridge and tunnel content in the Styles Palette and check for updates. These changes and updates can then be applied to all instances in the InfraWorks model. Done!
Updates from Autodesk Structural Bridge Design 2023
Having to manually adjust the steel girder dimensions in your InfraWorks models to keep them in sync with any changes to the structural analysis model is not ideal. So, we enabled a bi-directional workflow between structural analysis and the parametric bridge model.
Bi-directional workflows between InfraWorks and Autodesk Structural Bridge Design (ASBD) allows for a more efficient process for the management of changes to steel girder dimensions during the iteration of bridge design projects. Now, you can make changes to steel girder dimensions in ASBD for Line Girder or Refined Bridge analysis models extracted from InfraWorks and have these changes automatically reflected in the parametric InfraWorks model.
Additional New Features in Autodesk Structural Bridge Design 2023
- Automate Coding Sample: Sample code in C# is provided to help automation with full access to Structural Bridge Design section and beam parameters for Australian and Euro design codes.
- Design Section Loads Transfer: Streamlined workflow to transfer structural analysis results to design sections, creating the design section load cases automatically.
- Import & Export of Design Loads: Design Section loads can be imported and exported via the data explorer tree.
- Structural Bridge Design Home: Structural Bridge Design Home improves the access and viewing of information related to recently used models.
Parametric Content Creation Improvements
With this latest release of InfraWorks, we’ve alleviated the pain of having to use the Infrastructure Parts Editor plugin for Inventor in order to export components for use in InfraWorks. With InfraWorks 2023, By adding a new style in the Style Palette > Parametric Models tab, you can simply point to any Inventor Part or Assembly, and it will be added as a new style. We love that, too.
Command Search
Finding commands you need to execute can sometimes be a daunting task, especially if you are a new user or are pressed for time. With the many capabilities packed in InfraWorks, it is easy to get lost among them, despite our best efforts to keep the commands organized. To make this process easier, we’ve introduced Command Search for InfraWorks. Now, you can get to work more quickly on the task you need to perform by using simple terms to search for the commands you need when you need them. And, this tool keeps a history of your past actions, making it accessible even simpler.
Watershed Analysis & Profile Optimization
Starting April 2022, Watershed Analysis and Profile Optimization are now services that are integrated into InfraWorks. Cloud credits or tokens are no longer required to take advantage of these capabilities.
And for ReCap Pro 2023, introducing Autodesk Docs point cloud viewer
Autodesk® ReCap™ Pro 2023 releases an exciting enhancement that improves efficiencies in the way ReCap projects are shared. With this release, you can now share large ReCap datasets with other users for visualization, presentations and inspection workflows in the field, with only a browser and Autodesk Docs. This means you will no longer have to download large ReCap datasets onto your devices! This is a great addition and foundational to cloud-based workflows for reality capture data. It not only brings the reality capture data to the doorsteps of products like Civil 3D and Revit but also carries all the Forge viewer capabilities like measurement tools, annotation tools, sharing, and sync, making design authorization more powerful while keeping all project stakeholders on the same page.
Learn more: https://blogs.autodesk.com/recap/whats-new-in-recap-pro-2023/
The latest release of Civil 3D, InfraWorks, and ReCap Pro delivers new features, enhancements, and performance improvements that can help you deliver infrastructure projects more efficiently and with better outcomes. From planning and design through construction, these tools continue to support efficient design, more effective collaboration, and drive innovation.
Visit our product websites to learn more about what’s new in the 2023 releases of Civil 3D, InfraWorks and ReCap Pro. And tune in to our What’s New webinar and hear from our Product Managers about the latest and greatest in these tools.
Interested in keeping up-to-date with the latest news and information? Want to let us know what you think or share ideas for our Infrastructure products? Join our product forums and Ideas.
Civil 3D, InfraWorks, and ReCap Pro are available as standalone products or in the AEC Collection. Discover how you can take your project workflows even further with the AEC Collection.