Civil 3D Case Study 1 Kerry County Council _ Civil 3D Case Study

Civil 3D Case Study 2 Hutch Hollywood Consulting Engineers

Civil 3D Case Study 3 Valerie J. Keeley Ltd (VJK Ltd)

Civil 3D Case Study 4 Grontmij Netherlands BV

Civil 3D Case Study 5 Worldwide Dredging with AutoCAD Civil 3D

Civil 3D Case Study 6 Bury Metropolitan Borough Council

Civil 3D Case Study 7 ADL Highways

Civil 3D Case Study 8 Wind RES (Renewable Energy Systems)

Civil 3D Case Study 9

AutoCAD® Civil 3D PUTS MAYO ON THE MAP

With its borders reaching into the Atlantic Ocean, County Mayo on Ireland’s west coast may first appear as a rural idyll, but its County Council based in the town of Castlebar faces the same problems as its urban contemporaries. Neither is the county a ‘backwater’ boasting a population in excess of 117,446 (2002) and a land area of 5,585 square kilometres. Although not under the same pressures as most populous Irish counties, Mayo is not immune from the present-day needs of efficient planning methods and an urgent requirement to develop an inner relief road for the town of Claremorris was the catalyst that led to the introduction of AutoCAD Civil 3D by the Council.

Whilst not one of the largest civil projects in the County, the new inner relief road on the western side of town would connect Mount Street with Iarnród Éireann’s station on the Dublin to Westport/Ballina line. As with most projects there were snags – it had been known that the preferred route passed close to a pauper’s burial ground (a legacy of the Famine) within the town, but no definitive mapping references were available to help identify its precise location or external boundaries.

As to the project itself, this required the construction of two 4.5 metre carriageways of 330m in length, along with two footpaths of 2 metre width and two 1 metre verges. Ray Walsh of Mayo County Council explained the background; “We’ve worked with Autodesk products for over 20 years however most, if not all Irish Councils used an established piece of DOS software called DOER (Department Of Environment Roads) which was written by a staff member in that department back in 1985. Prior to this there were no software packages specifically designed for the creation of road planning. DOER provided a basic set of tools, and it worked well for horizontal and vertical design, sight distances and quantities so it quickly became standard issue for around 80 per cent of all Council road projects across the country. In Mayo, we had been using this program in conjunction with AutoCAD, but for all the benefits of DOER, it was time to move fully to the Windows environment, taking advantage of the facilities that AutoCAD Civil 3D could bring to the project.

“We took delivery of the package in September 2005 and it has quickly become an indispensable part of our operation. As the person directly responsible for the Claremorris project, I was impressed with Civil 3D’s ease of use, the ability to rebuild and undo being a case in point. With other packages this was either impossible or required you to save each and every stage of the drawing in order to roll back. I can not overstate my enthusiasm for Civil 3D in this regard. Even with an initial set up of the straights, you can drag them around as required both horizontally and vertically, something impossible within DOER. This allows you to create a new project in seconds, completely from scratch. Clearly, as with all software packages there is a learning curve and, being honest, I’m not fully acquainted with all the tools available to me, but this will come over time. It’s also worth mentioning we received valuable assistance from our local Autodesk reseller, Amicus Technology in Galway.

“The new carriageways, whilst not lengthy at 300 metres have complicated junctions with right and left filter lanes, along with the creation of a roundabout at one end. It was an ideal size for us to evaluate what Civil 3D could do, yet allow a comfortable switchover in technology. Mark Green at Amicus Technology did a great job in keeping us abreast of Civil 3D’s ever-expanding features, and is also a useful conduit for our feedback to be returned to the software developers. If there was to be any criticism, we’d like to see some form of country localisation configuration. This would create a default template of basic national standards for the country, considerably speeding up the creation of your first drawings. It would also help hasten the transfer from native programs like DOER. Mark Green, MD at Amicus Technology commented that “feedback from users has resulted in the development of an Irish Country Kit for Civil 3D. This would appear to addresses the localisation issues raised by Ray Walsh”. That said, Mark and his team kept us on the right track whilst on the initial learning curve, and I should also mention Autodesk’s fortnightly webcasts which are invaluable at helping us get the best from the software.

“In the last couple of years digital mapping has become a very important part of any project. Previously it was time-consuming to access mapping through AutoCAD, then refer to DOER.  If something wasn’t right you then had to exit one program to make the necessary changes in another. It was a very cumbersome way of working especially if it had to be done often. Civil 3D provides full integration with all of your data and digital mapping, making the creation and rebuilding of your data set an almost enjoyable task. Much is made of the collaborative features of Civil 3D. For others I can see why this would be important but as our local projects are usually small enough to be looked after by one person, this wasn’t a major concern. With all the Claremorris drawings complete, our contractors will shortly be assembling on-site using our Civil 3D generated drawings, ready to commence the groundworks. Barring any technicalities, we expect the new bypass to be fully completed and carrying traffic in six months.”