Trevor English
InfoDrainage – our drainage design software used for modeling, analyzing, and managing stormwater systems at the site scale – has been making huge strides in Civil 3D integration. The 2027 release brings even tighter integration.
Drainage design rarely happens in isolation. It sits alongside grading, corridors, utilities, and all the other moving parts that shape a site or linear project. That’s one reason the connection between InfoDrainage and Civil 3D has become such an important part of the broader drainage design story at Autodesk.
InfoDrainage 2027 keeps pushing that story forward. This release adds stronger interoperability for pond objects with Civil 3D and introduces new Merge and Import phase capabilities that make it easier to combine and manage models across stages, projects, and teams.
Extending interoperability for drainage design
For many projects, drainage design is not just about moving water off site, but managing runoff in a way that aligns with local requirements and sustainable drainage strategies.
Interoperability with Civil 3D has now been extended to include ponds. That means pond object data can be exchanged more reliably between platforms, helping teams preserve design intent and reduce the amount of cleanup that often comes with moving information between environments.
If you have followed the Civil 3D and InfoDrainage integration journey over the past few releases, this feels like a natural next step. We’ve looked at that progression before in How InfoDrainage integrates with Civil 3D and in our InfoDrainage 2025.1 release. Adding ponds continues that same theme: less manual rework, more design continuity, and a more connected workflow between drainage design and civil design.
Managing multi-model drainage workflows across teams and project phases
InfoDrainage 2027 also introduces new Merge and Import phase capabilities, giving users more control when combining models across different phases, projects, and contributors. That is a practical improvement with a very real payoff. As designs evolve, teams need better ways to consolidate work, compare iterations, and move multiple model components into one coherent workflow without losing track of what changed or why. This is especially true in projects where storage, conveyance, and runoff assumptions evolve alongside the design.
These new capabilities support that, simplifying the process of bringing models together while making design iteration easier to manage over the life of a project.
Connecting site-scale drainage design to the broader AECO workflow
The bigger story here is one that has been building for a while. InfoDrainage is not just a standalone hydraulic design tool, it’s increasingly part of a connected Autodesk workflow for drainage, site, and infrastructure design.
📚 You can see that broader narrative in our previous posts like InfraWorks + Civil 3D + InfoDrainage: a powerful drainage design workflow and Integrated highway design with the Civil 3D + InfoDrainage end to end workflow. It’s also part of a wider shift toward connected stormwater design workflows across the Autodesk AECO ecosystem, where site-scale drainage design feeds into broader infrastructure planning and analysis.
That connected workflow story is showing up in practice too. Firms like VHB and AECOM are using InfoDrainage within broader design environments to streamline collaboration and move projects forward with fewer disconnects between tools.
On their own, pond roundtripping and model merge controls might sound like feature specific improvements. Together, they point in a clear direction. InfoDrainage is becoming easier to use as part of a larger design ecosystem, while also becoming easier to manage when projects involve more models, more contributors, and more iteration.
That’s good news for drainage designers who want to spend more time refining design outcomes and less time translating work from one environment to another.
Learn more and get started
- Ready to upgrade? Sign in to your Autodesk account at manage.autodesk.com to download the latest version of InfoDrainage.
- For more InfoDrainage content, visit the InfoDrainage archive on the One Water Blog, revisit the Civil 3D integration posts linked above, or explore customer focused stories like VHB simplified and streamlined their workflows by adopting InfoDrainage.