Skip to main content

Autodesk introduces new software tools

As World Highways was going to press Autodesk was due to announce the 2014 versions of its entire range of programs including AutoCAD, Civil 3D, NavisWorks and Revit Structural and others programs used by the road industry. As previously, they are packaged in suites; Standard, Premium and Ultimate. Key aspects focus around the inclusion of a completely new and fast point-cloud “engine” developed from the Alice Labs company acquisition made last year. Part of a new Autodesk Recap, standing for reality captur
April 25, 2013 Read time: 2 mins
As 3260 World Highways was going to press 685 Autodesk was due to announce the 2014 versions of its entire range of programs including AutoCAD, Civil 3D, NavisWorks and Revit Structural and others programs used by the road industry. As previously, they are packaged in suites; Standard, Premium and Ultimate.

Key aspects focus around the inclusion of a completely new and fast point-cloud “engine” developed from the Alice Labs company acquisition made last year. Part of a new Autodesk Recap, standing for reality capture, this will be able to open point-clouds in the main tools used in civil engineering such as Map, Civil 3D and Revit. Recap is included in all of them. The company says the new engine is fast, inputs most of the major formats, and can translate point-clouds into different local coordinate systems to match other data.

The Infrastructure Modeller tool, for conceptualising projects and testing sketch scenarios is now relaunched as a enhanced version, re-named InfraWorks.

In the Ultimate suite this will include roads and highway modules which allow early design sketches to be done with precision data, so that they can be imported directly into Civil 3D for further work. It will also link to the cloud for tasks like optimisation of the vertical alignment

– part of a general philosophy for all Autodesk products using more "infinite" computing power of the cloud for heavy "grunt" work, instead of the local desktop.  Rendering capacity is another aspect.

The cloud will also be used for communication, and design and construction collaboration, with BIM360 Glue, a cloud accessed tool for design integration and class detection, which is a “NavisWorks light" - accessed via a very small client application with full high quality graphics whatever the capacities of the local laptop.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Topcon boss O’Connor announces release of new DC61 PXi Komatsu bulldozer
    April 17, 2013
    Ray O’Connor, president and CEO of Topcon Positioning Systems, has been a busy man at bauma. As well announcing the release of the new DC61 PXi Komatsu bulldozer, the Topcon boss also found time to comment on world markets and talk up a number of the products on the company’s stand.
  • Scottish trial for OTT HydroMet’s ecoLog 1000
    April 25, 2022
    An OTT ecoLog 1000 water level logger with cellular data connection to Hydromet Cloud was trialled upon the Vales Burn Bridge in Scotland.
  • EAPA’s 10th Symposium: sustainability and communication issues
    July 19, 2017
    Sustainability and the highways sector’s image issue were two major themes at the 10th symposium of the European Asphalt Paving Association in Paris. Margo Cole reports. Sustainability was explicit or implicit in many presentations during EAPA’s biennial symposium for the paving supply chain. The industry feels that sustainability is its home territory, thanks to an already good – and getting even better - record of recycling of materials. But do buyers and users of roads realise that the design and contrac
  • Major innovations are coming to market in concrete slipforming
    March 6, 2017
    Tough competition is being seen in the specialised market for concrete slipforming machines, with new partnerships and new technology coming to market - Mike Woof writes GOMACO is boosting the versatility of its Commander slipformer further with the development of the new Three-Track Commander IIIx variant. This has been configured to cope with much tighter radii than previous versions of the Commander III, allowing it to slipform a radius of just 610mm. This suits the machine to applications such as sli