That final detailed grading around the houses when designing a residential subdivision has always been a time-consuming and tedious process. This class will show you techniques that will let you quickly and accurately grade that final design. The focus of this class will be primarily on using feature lines to grade out the lots. You will learn different techniques for creating feature lines, most of the editing tools for feature lines, how to stylize and label your feature lines, and how they can be incorporated into a surface. Even if you've never graded a subdivision and never plan on doing so, if you've ever done any grading at all, you'll benefit from this class, as the tools we'll show here are extremely versatile and you can use them in just about any grading exercise.

You've just received a project that includes grading, and you wonder if it's possible. The project includes access roads with cross slopes onto a complicated site, and it calls for complex drainage swales and detention ponds. You will need to cut into a steep and irregular hillside while maintaining proper drainage, and you'll have to add integrate and detailed grading to meet project demands. And then, as is the case with most projects, there are changes and additions. Oh, and the end product must be a cohesive 3D model. My objective is to help you turn intimidation and fear (and maybe even some misconceptions) about approaching such complex grading challenges using AutoCAD Civil 3D software into confidence and conviction. We will look at using corridors, feature lines, 3D polylines, and many of the grading tools, and we will examine some techniques to tackle grading and make anything possible.

This session will look at Grading Optimization and how it can help users grade sites to optimal slopes or optimal balance. We'll look at the importance of zones, and the use of lines and points to provide detail to the automated grading. We'll also look at how to encourage desired results, and explore tools that can identify when results are trending toward undesirable results.

This session will look at Grading Optimization and how it can help users grade sites to optimal slopes or optimal balance. We’ll cover the importance of zones, and the use of lines and points to provide detail to the automated grading. We’ll also discuss how to encourage desired results, and look at tools that can identify when results are trending toward undesirable results.

Tired of seeing an AutoCAD® Civil 3D® software grading demonstration of a rectangular building pad? In this class, you will learn how to use the Civil 3D grading tools to build 10 common things that are great practical applications for most grading designs. We will look at walls, driveways, berms, swales, and many others things. We'll also look at how to combine these smaller designs into one large final design.

As consulting requires increasingly speedy turnaround times for plans, it’s time to use the tools in AutoCAD Civil 3D software to let a team grade a site together. Do you have a large neighborhood to grade? This class can show you a simple technique to grade the individual areas and have one final product in the end. The class begins by describing the strengths and weaknesses of corridor grading through a neighborhood. As the site progresses, detailed grading can be added in "pockets" in separate files to let multiple designers grade a site. Finally, using data references and paste surface, we’ll bring all the surfaces together into one surface that can be data referenced through production sheets.

The Grading Optimization extension has been on the market for a year now. Some of you have used the tool, but for those of you who haven’t and are curious or just don’t know where to start, this will be an introduction to Grading Optimization within Civil 3D software. We’ll look at the Grading Optimization tool palette and dive into the tools that let us implement grading optimization (including Low Point, Bounded Point, Aligned Edge, Bend Line, Drain Line, Elevation Offset, Zone, Exclusion Zone, Pond, Curb Building Pad, Reveal, Grading Limit, Parking Lot, Sidewalk, and Accessible Path). Using a real-world project, we’ll then assign the tools to the 2D objects within our Civil 3D drawing, adjust settings within the optimization screen, run the optimization, and then export the finished product back to Civil 3D. This lets us achieve grading results in minutes, and allows us to explore multiple site-grading scenarios more efficiently.

This session will provide hands-on instruction in the use of the Grading Optimization extension in Civil 3D software. We'll explore the product features and put the software to use on a commercial/retail development project. The instruction will use many of the included grading objects (i.e., building pads, curbs, drain lines, ponds, and more) to quickly develop a proposed surface, and import the results back to Civil 3D.

The old days of tissue paper seemed to have died with Civil 3D software, or have they? The mentality and methods used to grade are often using the computer as a sketch tool. We will look at how to use Civil 3D software to provide us with information and grade our site and subdivision efficiently and with a well-defined model. We will learn about feature lines, grading groups, grading objects, corridors, and surface editing.

Tired of seeing an AutoCAD Civil 3D software grading demonstration of a rectangular building pad? In this class, you learn how to use the Civil 3D grading tools to build 10 common things that are great practical applications for most grading designs. We look at walls, driveways, berms, swales, and many other things. We also look at how to combine these smaller designs into 1 large final design.

In this class, we’ll cover Civil 3D software and the new Grading Optimization program workflow. One of the most time-consuming tasks in Civil 3D is optimizing the design surface for your project. Using the new Grading Optimization program can greatly reduce the time you spend on this task. We'll walk through a basic site and demonstrate how to set up your Civil 3D design for the Grading Optimization program.

As land development and civil engineering projects continue to demand greater efficiency and precision, the Civil 3D Grading Optimization tool has emerged as a promising solution for automating and streamlining the grading process. This presentation will offer a practical, hands-on perspective from a daily Civil 3D user actively engaged in site design projects. Drawing from real-world experience, we will explore how the tool integrates into typical design workflows, discuss its strengths in accelerating conceptual grading and balancing earthwork, cover the key benefits it brings in terms of design iteration and visualization, and examine a few limitations. This session aims to provide an honest, experience-based evaluation of Grading Optimization, offering insights for professionals considering its adoption and those looking to enhance their current use of the tool.

If you really want to step up your grading game, then this is the class for you. We will be uncovering some of the most creative ways to grade your site that you haven’t seen before. We designed our proven workflows to remain flexible over the lifecycle of a project, despite the inevitable changes that occur during the design process. The first half of the presentation will cover corridors from feature lines. While this may seem basic, we will share several tricks that can dramatically reduce the time needed to produce a highly detailed site. The latter half of the class will take things to the next level, so please try to keep up. We will demonstrate how to utilize profiles generated from a plane surface to produce our site. Most attendees may be unfamiliar with this, but we are confident you will want to go back to your room to replicate it immediately after you leave this demo. This is a highly energized class, so come prepared to be caffeinated.

This class will show several tools from Autodesk, Inc.’s, toolbox for site grading. These tools will help with many types of tasks surface design, planning, and layout. They will save you time and money and give you a powerful visual so everyone can understand the obstacles and outcomes of site grading design. For an example, we will show you how to effectively link your finished ground surface to a sub grade surface so that it updates simultaneously. This class will cover many everyday tasks, and provide tips to help you accomplish them more efficiently and effectively. When finished with this class you will be able to grab a tool out of your toolbox, look at it, and think to yourself “I know I can use this tool for this task why wouldn’t it also work for this task in front of me?”

Mass grading requires detailed models, balanced sites, and forward-thinking engineers and contractors. This session will look at a couple of mass grading sites and some best practices in creating, editing, and managing your models. From our model, we’ll extract actionable data for projects at the bid and construction stages. We’ll also look at best practices for machine control models and discuss some pitfalls to avoid.

Parking lot grading is one of the most daunting tasks for a commercial site design project. Knowing the right tricks and techniques is crucial if you want to build models quickly and accurately and be able to modify them easily. In this class we will explore industry-proven design techniques that will result in stunning designs that are accurate, dynamic, and extremely useful in many aspects of the project. Some experience with site-grading design is recommended for attendees of this class.

This class will cover using feature lines to create a surface in Civil 3D software, including do’s and don’ts. The class will also cover tips on how to use the grading tool to create the feature lines you’ll need for grading. This type of grading is good for site plans and detail grading for walls, headwalls, ponds, ADA ramps, curbs, and ADA paths.

With the restricted supply of urban land and its increasing cost, developers are using land for subdivisions that was once considered unsuitable, leading to smaller, more complex projects on restricted footprints. In this class, we will look at numerous case studies of grading small lots that involve the use of AutoCAD® Civil 3D® software (since Release 2007) and grading, corridor, and pipe objects. We will review one person's workflow for getting the job done when Civil 3D is pushed to the extreme.

Grading parking lots incorporates complex design concepts and creative use of Civil 3D tools. Feature lines have always been the reliable standard, but recent additions to corridors make their inclusion a must. Through a combination of new features and solid workflows, we can now produce a faster, more dynamic process while still maintaining flexibility. We'll begin this class with a story of how Kimley-Horn and Autodesk collaborated to improve site design by improving how curbs are built using corridors. The ability to now create dozens of baselines and regions in a few clicks (along with other recent new features and conditional subassemblies) makes for a much faster workflow. We'll also give guidance on when to use corridors, feature lines, or both. We believe corridors for parking lot grading has finally arrived! Join John Armendariz and Brian Levendowski, along with Tim Yarris, Civil 3D product manager, to learn about these new tools, and how to apply them to your projects.

This class takes a focused look at a couple of workflows in AutoCAD Civil 3D software that use corridors to model surfaces with complex slope geometries. We present several examples from actual grading projects. One example demonstrates the creation of a slope that uses target alignments and profiles to control the placement and grade of a mid-slope bench and drainage channel. The second example shows how to use default and custom subassemblies to model variable height retaining walls.