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
SOLIDWORKS
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
Dassault Systemes offers SOLIDWORKS, a computer-aided design (CAD) system for education and manufacturing supporting 2D or 3D design, electrical design, simulations, and product development with collaboration tools.
$1,295
per year
Pricing
Autodesk Civil 3D
SOLIDWORKS
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Solidworks Annual Subscription
1,295
per year
Solidworks Standard
3,996
per standalone license
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Civil 3D
SOLIDWORKS
Free Trial
Yes
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
Can be licensed monthly ($305), Annually ($2,430), or every 3 years ($6,560).Available free for one year on a student license.
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More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Autodesk Civil 3D
SOLIDWORKS
Considered Both Products
Civil 3D
Verified User
Engineer
Chose Autodesk Civil 3D
Nothing compares to the ease of learning for Autodesk Civil 3D. It is very intuitive and easy to pick up. However, most DOTs require the use of MicroStation for roadway and transportation modeling. Autodesk Civil 3D does NOT integrate well with GIS or Bentley products. However, …
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.
As a mechanical engineer, it is one of the best tools to just start modeling and engineering with. The UI tools are intuitive and engineering analysis such Mold Analysis, FEA, are great! Other 3D CAD modeling tools have a longer learning curve to master. All in all, if you're not planning to design an entire airplane with large assembly files, then Solidworks is your tool!
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.
The collaborative work environment is a cool and useful feature where groups of people can work on the same model at the same time, and SOLIDWORKS ensures that you don't overwrite each other's work.
The ease and amount of customization options are very useful for creating a personalized and intuitive user interface, whether SOLIDWORKS is your native CAD package or not.
It is very easy to quickly edit a model you have already created. The software allows sketch and feature editing without having to take the time to actually enter the sketch/feature environment.
The use of configurations and configurations-specific dimensions in the same sketch is very useful for creating different forms of the same part
Save DWG 2D files in inches or metric easily, defaults to metric and has to be manually converted to inches
When using the sketch feature, the ability to disable ALL references. If I don't know the exact shape and I want to draw/adapt my design, it harshly interprets the references which have no value to me. The easiest exact is to think about when you have a Microsoft Word document that has a lot of formatting, photos, tabs, etc. If you accidentally hit the "enter" key, you can explode the formatting and everything goes crazy. SW does this to me, I just want to "doodle" my sketches, edit/delete/etc and not be bound by arbitrary references.
For the sketch feature, ability to use a DraftSight plugin of some sort. I'm super fast in DS, if I could draw using the commands in SW then I would probably never open DS again and convert to SW full time. Currently, I only use SW as a way to convert 3D files so I can build everything in DraftSight.
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.
I have been using SOLIDWORKS for around 12 years as of writing this review, so have learned where most things are and how they work. When first starting out it was quite daunting, but the interface is well laid out with like functions near each other which made finding new functions relatively easy.
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.
We have an unusual arrangement. We don’t pay for support, but we’re partnered with a VAR for second-tier support.
I work with other users if I have questions but when we’ve had to ask the VAR, they always have answers. It appears that all of the VARs have access to a support platform from DS SOLIDWORKS that helps them answer most questions.
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.
Onshape is a direct competitor. It has great entry level pricing and it is easy to access with no installation required. Being a web based app there is sometime some lag being based in NZ. Management also have concerns over where the data is stored on the cloud. With SW we can control where it is stored
