Success Story: Effective Road Design

Success Story: Effective Road Design

Florida's Department of Transportation (FDOT) is implementing AutoCAD's Civil 3D software for roadway designs.

The software's information modeling for roadway corridors means designers can quickly implement design changes and revisions with automated redrafting, and identify geometric conflicts well before they begin construction. The challenge at FDOT is to create sustainable transportation facility designs more efficiently and at a managed cost.

In addition, 3D models of the design can be provided to contractors for use with automated machine guidance for grading projects, enabling significant savings potential during construction. Automated machine guidance has become even more valuable as fuel prices and equipment operation costs continue to increase.

"From design through construction and into operations, the AutoCAD Civil 3D software helps transportation agencies like FDOT easily create and share coordinated digital design information and documentation," said Bill Goodson, vice president, Autodesk Government. "Civil 3D will help support FDOT's efforts to shorten the time to contract letting, reduce errors and omissions, and expedite project delivery."

Monthly Civil and Geospatial Webcasts

IMAGINiT Technologies invites you to join our monthly informational webcasts.

November Schedule:

• Civil 3D Webinar - 11/07/2008
• Civil 3D Product Overview and Demonstration - 11/14/2008
• Geospatial Webinar - 11/24/2008

December Schedule:

• Civil 3D Webinar - 12/05/2008
• Civil 3D Product Overview and Demonstration - 12/12/2008

For more information and to register for the following webcasts click here.

IMAGINiT's Civil Blogger, Doug Benoit, shares his insight on Autodesk civil engineering software including AutoCAD, AutoCAD Land Desktop and AutoCAD Civil 3D. In this month's newsletter, Doug shares an excerpt of his blog:

I thought I'd pass on Wendy Miller's tips for improving performance in AutoCAD Civil 3D 2009. (Wendy Miller is one of IMAGINiT's Civil Specialists who can be found spreading the Civil 3D word from IMAGINiT's Salt Lake City Utah office.)

• Turn off the Ribbon.
• Delete drawing scales from drawings.
• Close your Tool Palettes.
• Turn off extended and roll over tool tips.

You can read the remainder of Wendy's tutorial at Increasing the performance of AutoCAD Civil 3D 2009.

To find out what Doug will be sharing next, visit his blog at: www.rand.com/imaginit/civilblog

When you select an option from Land Desktop's Points menu > Import/Export Points, you may receive the following error messages:

The default COGO Database format could not be found.
There was an error opening the format handler.

After this, the application exits. Additionally, when you open the Terrain Model Explorer (TME), the right side of the TME may be blank. These errors occur because you do not have the necessary permission to access the Windows Registry key for a third-party program that Land Desktop uses.

To resolve these errors, you will need to obtain full permissions on the following registry key:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{1171A62F-05D2-11D1-83FC-00A0C9089C5A}.

Green Design: Roads to Windmills

As one of the world’s leading wind energy companies, Renewable Energy Systems acts on what it believes. Over the past few years it has transformed an old egg farm into a model of eco-friendly design as its head office.

The building is made totally from sustainable materials; all energy is provided from onsite renewable energy sources; and parts of the roof are clothed with turf to provide extra insulation. The company uses Autodesk's Civil 3D to design the access roads on its wind farms, saving around 50% of the time compared to previous methods.

RES develops, builds, and runs wind farms across three continents. The power produced by onshore wind farms is one of the cheapest forms of renewable energy available today. The teams designing the infrastructure of the sites need to analyse and interrogate designs in detail. This is particularly the case when creating layouts of sites, such as off the roads – often upgraded from farm tracks - to allow turbine delivery vehicles to get to the actual turbine locations.

Now the team is able to bring in a topographical survey of the site into Civil 3D and produce a surface from this. They then enter the initial planning layout for the tracks and the location of the turbines, putting these in as alignments. This enables them to check the gradients. Gradients are crucial. By their very nature, wind farms are almost always in remote locations and on steep, hilly sites. The manufacturers set a maximum slope so they are physically able to get the turbines up on the sites.

www.res-group.com

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NAVTEQ has joined Autodesk's Data Initiative to provide you with online access to NAVTEQ's map data  at www.navteq.com/autodesk.

The site lets you license single or multiple counties of NAVTEQ's vector, street, and centerline data. After you place your order, you get an email with the containing URLs for downloading the NAVTEQ data.

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AutoCAD Land Desktop Transition Program

Qualified AutoCAD® Land Desktop software clients can take advantage of the AutoCAD Land Desktop Transition Program. Eligible AutoCAD Land Desktop software clients can crossgrade to AutoCAD® Map 3D, AutoCAD® Civil, or AutoCAD® Civil 3D® software for a special promotional price.

This promotion runs July 8, 2008, through April 17, 2009, and is available to qualified clients who have licenses of Autodesk® Land Desktop 2006 or 2007 software, or AutoCAD Land Desktop 2008 or 2009 software products. (AutoCAD Land Desktop 2009 customers who purchase their product after July 7, 2008 are not eligible.)

On March 14, 2009, Autodesk will be retiring upgrades from AutoCAD® 2006, AutoCAD 2006-based products, Autodesk® VIZ 2006, Autodesk® 3ds Max® 8 and Autodesk Inventor® Series 10 software. To help you make the move to the latest release, from October 18, 2008 through January 16, 2008 you can save up to 10% on Autodesk upgrades from the retiring 2006 releases to the 2009 versions of Autodesk® software.

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Still designing in AutoCAD® Release 14, AutoCAD® 2000, AutoCAD® 2000i, AutoCAD® 2002, AutoCAD® 2004 or AutoCAD® 2005 software? Keep your software current with the Autodesk Legacy Program, which gives loyal customers, like you, an easy way to keep your software up to date.

Save up to 30% off your new Autodesk software license with the Autodesk Legacy Program, from October 18, 2008 through January 16, 2008. Autodesk Legacy Program.

Finance up to 100% of your software, subscription, or services purchase.

Cash-flow constraints can keep businesses large and small from realizing their full potential. So if concerns about managing costs are keeping you from purchasing the technology, subscription, or consulting services you need to be successful, take advantage of our flexible financing options – for up to 100% of your investment!

The long-standing partnership with Key Equipment Finance allows you to break down large technology acquisitions into manageable, fixed monthly payments over 12, 24, or 36 months. Favorable Financing

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