Like continental drift, some fundamental shifts come gradually. The expanding use of three-dimensional, intelligent, model-based design is an example. Autodesks Civil 3D 2005 is its newest wrinkle.
I cant think of a more significant effort at Autodesk since we came out with Inventor several years ago, says Steve Guttman, Autodesks Infrastructure Solutions Divisions director of product management. Civil 3D creates intelligent relationships between objects so design changes are dynamically updated whenever a related element is changed. Entire corridors can readjust with a mouse click. The software is built on AutoCAD and uses its standard menu and toolbar features.