Recommended Grading Software for HV Substation Design

[livewire9]

I work for a new start-up and we need to get software to help us with the grading design of some new HV substations. At my previous job with a large utility, the Autodesk suite was already in place to aid with this task. Now, I am responsible to help identify the best package for our needs: designing a new sub pad and access road(s) on natural terrain to balance earthwork volumes. Our initial design will utilize dtm files from LIDAR. A ground survey will be obtained later on to finalize design.

We currently have one full AutoCAD 2011 license. Would it make sense to simply add the Autodesk Civil 3D package? Or is there other software out there more competitively priced that can serve our needs and be compatible with AutoCAD for detailing the design, etc. We don't need a product that offers 50 tools when we will only employ 3 or 4 of them.

 

[francesca]

I'm a Civil 3D instructor so I'm biased... I like Civil 3D. InRoads can work in AutoCAD too, but it's WAY less intuitive. If you want budget, you can go with AutoCAD Civil; it loses a few of the features of Civil 3D.

 

[TerryScan]

Check out Carlson Civil. I believe one can demo it:

http://www.carlsonsw.com

 

[beej67]

At what point do you not pay the 10 grand for the Civil3D license and instead pay someone to engineer it using their brain?

A talented designer could design your pad and balance your earthwork by hand using only the software you already have (AutoCAD) in about 16 hours total labor, and that includes two or three revisions to get the earthwork right. If they plan ahead and get the pad elevation right on the first stab, they could cut that time in half. And that includes doing the cut/fill calculations *by hand* using the grid method. Compare that to Civil 3D, which would probably take, what, three hours francesca? Presuming you've already got all your road templates built out? Two if you're a rockstar?

I used to do this sort of work with AutoCAD 14 and Softdesk in about 6 hours back in the 90s, with software you can basically find laying in a gutter in the street nowadays. Where you make your money with Civil 3D isn't in designing a pad and a road, it's in designing 100 pads and 100 roads, with stormwater hydraulics and the whole shebang. And in the BIM benefits of having a 3d model when you're done, provided you can cash those in somehow.

If you're buying something for a lot of future work, consider going Civ3D. I hear it's amazing. If you're looking at a dozen or so projects a year consider Carlson. From my fiddling with it, it looked about like Land Development Desktop from the past few years, which is plenty fine to get done what you need done. If you're just looking to get that one project out the door for now to get some revenue flowing through your startup, you might consider hiring some guy off the Eng-Tips forum as a 1099 to just do the grading for you using Intellicad, or whatever else he's got. No offense intended at all here because it's good work and I'd go for it, but pad grading a slab and a gravel access road is pretty much kids stuff, when it comes to the civil part anyway.



Hydrology, Drainage Analysis, Flood Studies, and Complex Stormwater Litigation for Atlanta and the South East -

http://www.campbellcivil.com

 

[livewire9]

Ok. I got a handle on the situation. Found Terramodel software for cheap. I'm on it now. BJ, you must have it made with the luxury of picking up Georgia Tech eng drop-outs to work as your designers... you've got a lot of moxie.

 

[beej67]

If you must know, the best civil designer I've ever worked with was a Purdue grad with a landscape architecture degree. GT dropouts typically go into software development and make a lot more money than me.

I saw Terramodel do some pretty amazing "Civil 3d type" stuff around 2000 when AutoCAD was still stuck in the Softdesk days. Pick and drag your road vertical alignment and watch the contours adjust to match / etc. What drove me crazy wasn't its modeling capabilities, which were superb, it was the drafting. Plans always looked like crap, but then again I may have just been working with crappy drafters. What's it cost nowadays?

Proposed contours from DTMs always look terrible to me, so even if I've got a rockstar 3d modeling software to design with, I still prefer the final grading plan be done with polylines. It's a shame so much of the art of engineering has been computerified.



Hydrology, Drainage Analysis, Flood Studies, and Complex Stormwater Litigation for Atlanta and the South East -

http://www.campbellcivil.com

 

[francesca]

Well *my* Terramodel plans didn't look like crap. I used to do all my lot/detention basin grading by hand with splines. Civil 3D is very intuitive and easy to learn. Terramodel has a lot of bells and whistles, but I had to be shown them all, I didn't figure out a thing on my own.

 

[MEM1]

checkout

http://www.ezysurf.com

It runs inside autocad, not sure if it will run in 2011 or not.

 

[cvg]

never met a grading contractor yet that gave a hoot how "pretty" the plans look.

 

[livewire9]

What I'm excited about with Terramodel is that a project model can be imported directly into Trimble GPS grade control equipment to guide dozers or graders and achieve final grade within an inch of the design elevations. The technology has been around but it is emerging. With Civil 3D, I believe those files have to be translated into another file to be usable by grade control equipment.

 

[francesca]

Autodesk certainly sells Civil 3D as if it's seamless. "Field to finish" was the catchphrase for all the surveying stuff in the 2010 edition that Terramodel's been doing for ages (certainly was doing in 2004 when I used it).

 

[beej67]

never met a grading contractor yet that gave a hoot how "pretty" the plans look.

Well sure, but is the grading contractor your client? Is the grading contractor giving you your regulatory approval?

I've seen two schools of thought on this. The "other school" contends that your deliverables serve more function than just telling a contractor what to build. They're also your primary marketing tool, and they're a permanent record for litigation purposes.

Terramodel was BIM before BIM was cool, and I've always had a very high respect for the software. But it brings up another point of discussion that's maybe better for the Business Practice forum. If you're an engineer, and you produce some grading plans, and then pass the DTM off to a grading contractor, and there's an error in the DTM that doesn't show on the stamped plans ... who's liable for the error? If your record drawings are right, is it their job to follow the record drawings or the computer model?

It seems to me like there's a lot of supposed benefits of doing a project front to back in a BIM type system that are only really reaped if you bypass the typical "chain of responsibility / litigation" in the US engineering business model, which limits its application to design-build or to foreign work. Thoughts?



Hydrology, Drainage Analysis, Flood Studies, and Complex Stormwater Litigation for Atlanta and the South East -

http://www.campbellcivil.com

 

[francesca]

I would say that Terramodel was 3D, but I wouldn't call it BIM.

BIM definitely requires rewriting standard contracts and digital stamps. There are some interesting liability questions with BIM, for instance, is it singular responsibility for the model, collective responsibility, or individual responsibility for individual parts? ConcensusDocs does go part of the way there. To answer your question about the model or the record drawings; the engineer is liable because the two should match. Which takes precedence (if you can't wait for an RFI to be answered) is down to the contract. (Really, it's the one that makes the most sense.)

 

[cvg]

unless you work for the contractor, than the dtm is provided for his convenience only, the plans and specs are the contract documents, the dtm is not even mentioned in either one (at least in the US). Has anybody on here even used consensus docs? I haven't heard of any projects that have ever used it.

regarding marketing using grading plans, sure if the project gets approved and comes in under budget, the client is happy. Still, doesn't matter if the grading contractor thinks the plans look nice. the contractor is not our client. agency approval rarely includes a review of the curve fitting on the contours. That said, I always make sure the contours look smooth. However more important is to make sure slopes and quantities are correct. Fixing busts in the grading before it goes out to bid is better marketing than makeing them look nice.

 

[francesca]

cvg, I've read of BIM projects using collaborative risk sharing in contracts, along the lines of "nobody makes a profit unless everybody does." I don't think it's important if people use ConcensusDocs so much as that there is a group of people working on the issue of new contracts for a new way of project delivery. Individual companies can take their templates and change them as fits their needs. One might argue that each BIM project is unique and needs a unique contract to manage the risks involved.

None of the DOT plans I've worked on have shown contours except for existing contours on EPSC plans.

 

[cvg]

good point, highway plans rarely show any proposed contours. I prefer slope arrows with limits of cut and fill myself. most of my work has been with public agencies and they all stick with the tried and true old fashioned contracts based either on the DOT or AIA templates and no BIM used at all. Our design-build work is a little different but so far, very little risk sharing is involved.

regarding consensus docs, they make it sound like there was a large consensus built while developing the documents, however the consensus was all between the various contractor groups, no consensus was reached with any engineering, architectural or owner/developer groups. so where is the consensus? I'm all for more collaboration, but not sure that is a particularly good template. CM@R seems to be the newest trend around here. I do see it reducing both contractor and owner risk to some degree, but certainly not reducing the price at the same time. I always thought that with reduced risk, the project would cost less. Doesn't seem to work in practice.