When starting any new endeavor, it’s best to enter with a game plan or strategy for success. Handling project designs within Civil 3D is no different; provided we take some quick measures up front to identify all the different Civil 3D modeled objects and project team members required to fulfill the project design requirements, we’ll be able to ensure that we hit the ground running and maintain efficiency throughout the progression of our designs.

As we know, Civil 3D is essentially a vertical application that extends the functionality of Autodesk’s AutoCAD platform, so we already have a good understanding of how external references are managed throughout the design process. While Civil 3D introduces a new level of complexity with the ability to generate civil infrastructure-related model objects, we also have the ability to data reference individual modeled objects, via data shortcuts, from one file to another as needed, eliminating...