From the Middle East to South America, urban planners have implemented Autodesk® Civil 3D® to address environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) issues in metropolitan development. The backbone of Civil 3D is Building Information Modeling (BIM), which enables collaboration among specialists.
CTC Software provides BIM for urban planning with its Civil Information Modeling (CIM) add-ins. These extensions–available in our CIM and Nexus Suites™, as well as our Corridor Productivity Pack™–operate within Civil 3D to foster diverse and efficient cooperation.
Urban Planning in Abu Dhabi: Civil 3D for Data-Driven Design
In Abu Dhabi, an Emirati principality, Civil 3D has been applied in the modernization of Al Ain. The ancient oasis city is part of the Sheikh Zayed Protected Areas Network, a patchwork of protected conservation sites.
Al Ain sits at the base of Jebel Hafeet, one of the UAE’s tallest mountains, and is historically significant for its “Beehive Tombs,” Bronze-Age domed necropolises constructed in the foothills of Jebel Hafeet.
Balancing Al Ain’s current growth and prehistoric allure, urban planners relied on Civil 3D and BIM to model “The Plantations.” The development plan reimagined over 600 acres to meet evolving residential, employment, and leisure needs. But, The Plantations presented environmental restrictions (e.g., accommodating rivulets for runoff rainwater) and aesthetic considerations (e.g., ensuring unobstructed views of Jebel Hafeet).
Civil 3D subsumed Al Ain’s heterogeneous data requirements, optimizing front-loaded parametric modeling. For the second phase of The Plantations’ workflow, urban planners seized on BIM interoperability amongst Civil 3D and other Autodesk platforms to reduce manual calculations and analyses.
For complex projects, comparable to The Plantations, CTC Software enriches Civil 3D with Suites of add-ins. The CIM Project Suite’s Auto Grader, for instance, permits users to set rules for values (e.g., parameters), systematically securing consistent, precise grading through automation as a Civil 3D model is adjusted.
Changing the Game in Medellín: Civil 3D and Infraworks for City Design
Colombian municipal planners utilized Civil 3D and Autodesk Infraworks® to revitalize Medellín. The city is, notoriously, the birthplace of the “King of Cocaine,” Pablo Escobar, and his Cartel. The Medellín Cartel’s reign, from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, bred Medellín’s reputation as one of the most dangerous places in the world.
Since then, Medellín has undergone a Renaissance guided by “social urbanism” and Autodesk technology. Municipal officials have literally bridged the gap between rich and poor, structurally connecting low-income neighborhoods to parts of Medellín affording more opportunity.
Designers in the municipality have expanded on past progress, as a major uptick in tourism (kindled by Netflix’s Narcos) and climate change compel ongoing attention. To stay abreast of changing circumstances, urban planners have employed Civil 3D and Infraworks to reestablish Medellín as a safe, clean, equitable, and green locale.
Infrastructure planners, in Medellín, were able to form terrain models within Civil 3D’s digital domain. These replicas depict large swaths of land, the intricacies of which are captured by Civil 3D’s BIM component as data, which can be reviewed by stakeholders in a municipal overhaul. This process encourages feedback, making a Civil 3D model a mosaic tiled from many voices.
The comprehensive recordation of data in Civil 3D is complemented by Autodesk’s Infraworks. This platform generates contextual models derived from the aggregate of information stored in Civil 3D. Moreover, Infraworks, as a conceptual design program, is useful to visualize and examine a vast model’s practicality under real-world conditions.
CTC Software offers a multi-functional apparatus for content management: the Nexus Suite. This Suite can hold and share large amounts of data-rich content, while simultaneously serving as a monitoring and governing device for all content linked to an Autodesk figure.
The Nexus Suite guarantees uniform content to support city designers’ underlying goals, such as the social urbanism aims of Medellín’s planners.
CTC Software Tools for Civil 3D: Game-Changers for Urban Designers
Urban planning demands the expertise of not only engineering, architecture, and construction professionals, but also social scientists, public servants, geographers, and historians. It is an interdisciplinary effort, facilitated by the BIM functionality at the heart of Civil 3D.
CTC Software’s curated Suites build on Civil 3D’s foundation, patterning the remodeling done in Al Ain and Medellín to economize city design. Visit our product catalog to scope out our Autodesk add-ins and learn how they are advantageous for urban planners.
