AutoCAD Land Desktop Civil 3D Companion

Civil 3d Land Desktop Companion is one of the best software programs for Roads & Highway design. I started to use Softdesk before which is the previous name for Land Desktop and it works on AutoCad14. Now Land Desktop Civil 3D companion come up with one package - which includes Land Development, Civil design, Survey and Map.

Autodesk have also come up with a new Software called AutoCAD Civil 3D and I have to admit it - it is pretty impressive. But even though, still Land Desktop has a big advantage in terms of working in a large scale projects and bulky drawings for submittal. So, when we talk about designing of 350Km road – putting all points, all tin surface & contours, all profile existing ground & proposed grade, all cross section and Cut & fill volume table in one drawing - surely your computer will be out of memory and exhausted with this long and winding road. But Land Desktop has the ability to separate this large project into different drawings so that your computer will work more faster and easier.That’s why I choose Civil 3D Land Desktop Companion in designing for roads over 50Km.

What I like most about Civil 3D Land Desktop Companion was – we can start a project in 2 different ways. Each either you can start by importing survey points data or by imputing Offset – elevation points in the cross section to create existing surface and profile which Civil 3D don’t have. And this is still the standard practice in other country for final cut & fill quantity and that's the reason why Land Desktop is still widely used by engineer especially in the Middle East (Saudi Arabia and Libya) where they have hundreds of kilometer roads to design.