Autodesk Civil 3D vs. National Instruments LabVIEW

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Civil 3D
Score 9.3 out of 10
N/A
Autodesk's Civil 3D is a computer aided design (CAD) application designed to support a variety of civil infrastructure projects including rail, roads and highways, land development, airports, drainage, storm and sanitary, and civil structures.
$335
per month
LabVIEW
Score 9.3 out of 10
N/A
National Instruments headquartered in Austin offers LabVIEW, a systems engineering software platform and toolkit.
$407
per year
Pricing
Autodesk Civil 3DNational Instruments LabVIEW
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
LabView Base
$407
per year
LabView Full
3,206
per year
LabView Professional
5,344
per year
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Civil 3DLabVIEW
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsCan be licensed monthly ($305), Annually ($2,430), or every 3 years ($6,560).Available free for one year on a student license.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Autodesk Civil 3DNational Instruments LabVIEW
Features
Autodesk Civil 3DNational Instruments LabVIEW
Computer-Aided Design Software
Comparison of Computer-Aided Design Software features of Product A and Product B
Autodesk Civil 3D
-
Ratings
National Instruments LabVIEW
8.0
1 Ratings
8% above category average
Rendering and Visualization00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Parametric Design00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Collaboration and Sharing00 Ratings6.01 Ratings
Compatibility with other software and formats00 Ratings6.01 Ratings
Assembly Design00 Ratings6.01 Ratings
Simulation and Analysis00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Documentation and Annotation00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Customization and Extensions00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
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Autodesk Civil 3DNational Instruments LabVIEW
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User Ratings
Autodesk Civil 3DNational Instruments LabVIEW
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(8 ratings)
10.0
(6 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Autodesk Civil 3DNational Instruments LabVIEW
Likelihood to Recommend
Autodesk
Civil 3D is best suited for medium to large-scale projects, as it may be overkill for small projects. It is very efficient in design and drafting work, as well as creating reports. It also helps in creating surfaces using external data and building assemblies, as well as providing drainage for infrastructure projects. It can also provide outputs as DWG files to be directly used in the AutoCAD application.
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NI (National Instruments)
LabView is a great tool to connect your sensors to your data aquisition hardware. It makes it really easy to set-up a data acquisition routine that meets your individual requirements. I, as an engine researcher, find it very well suited for engine experimentation. For any other programming needs, i.e. not data acquisition, I would not recommend using LabView because of its graphical programming architecture. The architecture makes it a great tool for Data Aquisition but puts at a disadvantage when it comes to other computational tasks, e.g. making a thermodynamic engine model. For those applications having text-based programming is better suited
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Pros
Autodesk
  • We use this software for the optimal and advanced design of pipelines and complex structuring, or it can also be said that we use it mainly for a geotechnical model, due to its high definition of the large proportion of the works that are carried out through of this application, since the tasks that are used with Civil 3D require extreme patience, precision and a lot of time to develop a model in its entirety, but we managed to acquire all the necessary and strategic points, to establish and start the production of a prototype digitized in particular.
  • Easy to export to normal AutoCAD or collaborate with most Autodesk products.
  • Vehicle Turning Simulation and Stormwater analysis is great addition to the package. Ability to use the all familiar AutoCAD tools, as well as LISP and SCR to automate some processes is one of the greatest advantages of the software.
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NI (National Instruments)
  • Being a graphical programming language, it is a little easier for a layperson to understand than text based programming languages.
  • The program has very good debugging features.
  • Support is good.
  • There are a variety of tutorials which make it easier to do something that you aren't sure about.
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Cons
Autodesk
  • I think I need more experience in using Autodesk Civil 3D as it is a huge jump from the previous software that I had been using
  • Some functions could take less steps to complete
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NI (National Instruments)
  • improve the management of pc resources to use the minimum amount of resources
  • add a utility for zooming in the block diagram window
  • Improve management of complementary applications, such as real time module or dsc
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Usability
Autodesk
It is one of the most standard Designing and drafting tools for infrastructure projects and is the go-to for including it with the Autodesk ecosystem. Its strong collaboration with GIS and Other tools helps us to create a software workflow as a digital twin platform as well. The Drawings and plans generated can be easily imported into other applications, allowing for full control over the workflow.
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NI (National Instruments)
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Autodesk
They have a vast open community, which has helped us understand Autodesk Civil 3D from the beginning. They have provided many templates and tutorials videos to our team due to that we can learn every new feature from them. Autodesk Civil 3D has also helped us to interconnect all its software in an internal bridge, which helps us switch between software as we need.
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NI (National Instruments)
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Autodesk
As mentioned before, using Civil3D got its own pros such as creating different profiles that are interactive such if you change any level, the profile will be updated automatically while in AutoCAD you will suffer by updating them manually. In addition, creating models that also are interactive and help in clash detection for different utilities in a project.
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NI (National Instruments)
We chose LabVIEW over MATLAB due to the integration with hardware and the graphical programming interface. Also, the ability to use LabVIEW with FPGAs and real-time processors without having to make large changes to the code base or swapping to a separate programming environment was a big benefit since we don't know what hardware will be suitable for each customer application.
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Return on Investment
Autodesk
  • positive: saved us time on setting up sheets/sheet set manager
  • positive: saved time and effort on cutting profiles
  • positive: saved us money on printing, since it is easy to bind the dgns it creates
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NI (National Instruments)
  • We use NI's data acquisition hardware as well which has made it possible to get whatever experimental data we need to get for our studies.
  • LabView has made it possible for us to post-process and tailor the raw data to our specific needs.
  • With a responsive customer support team, NI allows us to expand our data acquisition and post-processing capabilities to carry out the kind of research projects that we would want.
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ScreenShots

Civil 3D Screenshots

Screenshot of Civil 3D - Infrastructure Software from AutodeskScreenshot of Civil 3D - Rail Alignments