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Autodesk AutoCAD Civil3D 2025: What’s New in Civil 3D 2025?

It’s always fun to see the new items in all of Autodesk products.  Could there be more? Absolutely!! But continuing to see enhancements of key features and performance updates throughout the year, and with the annual release, this is always a date I look forward to!

Keep in mind that some things like Project Explorer and Grading Optimization are now included in Civil 3D and/or the AEC Collection! So aside from just the new things in our favorite hero products, there is a lot more to offer if we choose to expand our workflow just a bit. It seems as if the main focus for 2025 products was to focus on overall DWG performance issues.  However, there are some great new features and functionalities in the AutoCAD platform products, and I’ll highlight a few things new in 2025 as well as Civil 3D 2024.2 and 2024.3.

Prior Version Interoperability and DWG Format

This is the first thing I get asked about with each version drop.  So, I’ll start off with an easy one!

  • Autodesk Civil 3D 2025 uses the AutoCAD 2018 drawing format.
  • Drawings saved in Autodesk Civil 3D 2025 can be opened in Autodesk Civil 3D versions 2019 through 2023, and AutoCAD Civil 3D 2018.

AutoCAD Platform Items

Here are a couple new things to look forward to in all AutoCAD platform products:

Esri Maps (IN ALL AUTOCAD PRODUCTS)

Now, you can use five additional types of Esri maps to assign imagery to your drawing from!

From AutoCAD -> To open, click Insert tab > Location panel > Set Location > From Esri Maps.

Or from the command window, type GEOGRAPHICLOCATION and select Map.

From Civil 3D -> First, make sure you have the proper coordinate system set in your drawing (Civil 3D). Then go to the Geolocation Tab of the ribbon and choose your preferred map option.

Now, you can choose from five new Esri basemap styles:

  • Esri OpenStreetMap
  • Esri Imagery
  • Esri Streets
  • Esri Light Gray
  • Esri Dark Gray

Import Markup from Autodesk Docs

Create markups on a PDF in Autodesk Docs, then sync the PDF so the markups can be viewed by collaborators in the AutoCAD Trace workspace. The PDF markup file is continually connected to the AutoCAD drawing, meaning as you add changes to the markup file, collaborators will see those changes in AutoCAD.

Hatch Improvements

The HATCH command now provides a convenient option to draw hatches without the need for pre-existing boundary geometry.

Now, you can choose between creating a filled shape or hatching along a specified path using polyline, circle, or rectangle draw options.

New Civil 3D 2025 Corridor Workflows

Improved performance in various areas of corridor workflows.

Corridor property dialog box enhancements

  • Improved the efficiency of opening and closing the corridor property dialog box.
  • Improved efficiency when switching corridor property dialog box tabs.
  • Improved performance when editing in the corridor property dialog box and then clicking Cancel to exit without making changes.

Corridor surface creation

  • Improved performance for building corridor surfaces that is 3 to 4 times faster than previous versions.
  • Added the drawing level AeccFastCorridorSurfaceBuild system variable to control the methods of building corridor surface. A value of 0 is normal generation and a value of 1 is a faster generation at the cost of visual fidelity.
  • Improved performance when deselecting a corridor surface on the Corridor Properties dialog box and the Corridor Surface dialog box.

Corridor updates to rebuild affected corridor sections commands

  • Region grip editing in drawing.
  • Split Region contextual (right-click corridor) or ribbon command.
  • Merge Region contextual (right-click corridor) or ribbon command.

Corridor regeneration efficiency improvements

  • Improved efficiency of the corridor section view editor by avoiding a slope pattern drawn in the section viewport.
  • Improved efficiency by avoiding corridor surface and corridor section recalculation when a corridor is out of date. This improves the performance of commands like editing alignment or the profile of baselines of corridors.
  • Improved regeneration efficiency for corridor feature lines.

New Civil 3D 2025 Surface Workflows

  • Added a reduced surface level of detail to improve performance when working in drawings with large surfaces.
    • Contextual commands to change the surface level of detail added to Prospector tree, In canvas, and the ribbon.
    • Default setting for Reduced Surface Level of Detail added to the Edit Feature Settings - Surface dialog box.
    • Level of detail commands are available from the command line.
      • AllSurfaceLODLow
      • AllSurfaceLODHigh
      • SurfaceLODLow
      • SurfaceLODHigh

Finally getting the mms issues resolved? HOPEFULLY!! Now if we can just get rid of the pesky .mms file we’d be in business. But this is a good start.

  • Performance improvements when saving surface MMS files.
    • The MMS file will not update if there is no surface geometry change.
    • The dref surface will not update when the host drawing is saved.
  • Performance improvements during multithreaded contour regeneration on both TIN and Grid surfaces.
    • Opening Drawings. When the drawing contains surfaces, styles using contours display component.
    • Surface Editing. When the drawing contains surfaces, styles using contours display component.
    • Changing Surface Style. When the drawing contains surfaces, styles using contours display component.
    • Surface Creation. When commands trigger the computation of contours.
    • Contour Extraction from Surface.
  • General performance improvements when working with surfaces.
    • Improved Zoom/Pan performance when the level of detail mode is off in Conceptual/GSF mode (shaded, and shaded with Edge).
    • Surface will not regenerate if there is no surface geometry change (such as the changing name or description of a surface in the surface properties dialog box.

New Civil 3D 2025 Dynamo Workflows

  • The Dynamo core version has been upgraded to Dynamo 3.0.3. For more information, see the following blog post: 

https://dynamobim.org/dynamo-core-3-0-3-release/

  • Package Manager: The new Package Manager dialog provides a single location for locating and managing packages. In the Package Manager, you’ll find the following:
    • Package search, with a new filtering option to view packages with or without dependencies on other packages.
    • Package details panel that opens in the Package Manager window.
    • Updated workflow to upload a new package or a new version of an existing package.
    • A list of all currently installed packages
    • A list of the packages you’ve uploaded.
    • Access to your package settings.
  • Search for nodes by category: This improvement to the search enables you to specify node categories with a period. For example, searching for “list.r” returns nodes that belong to the List category and begin with the letter R.
  • More readable Watch node text: Multi-line text is more readable in Watch nodes. Scroll bars, when needed, are visible by default, and you can use the resize handle to display more text.
  • Gate node and Remember node in the Dynamo library: The standard Dynamo library now includes the Gate and Remember nodes. The Gate node allows you control the execution in sections of your graph. An open Gate passes data through unchanged, while a closed Gate sends no data downstream. A Remember node stores the data passing through it to the Dynamo file and returns the stored data if the input is null.
  • Workspace geometry scaling range message: If your inputs are outside of the currently selected modeling range, affected nodes will now appear in an info state rather than a warning state. In Dynamo for Civil 3D, use Medium workspace geometry scaling for the best results.
  • Object Binding update: Object Binding has dropped support for the deserialization technique in previous versions of Dynamo. Dynamo 3.0 and beyond uses Strings. If your object binding settings are stored in the graph, you’ll need to resave your graph to migrate it. If settings are stored in the DWG file, you’ll also need to resave the drawing.

New Civil 3D 2025 Misc. Enhancements

  • The system variable ISAVEPERCENT now defaults to 50. This improves drawing save performance with the trade-off of a potentially larger file size.
  • Autodesk Storm and Sanitary Analysis 2024.1 supports the 2025 versions of Civil 3D and AutoCAD Map 3D.
  • AutoCAD commands have been integrated into the Civil 3D ribbon.
    • Set Location changes.
      • Insert tab  Location panel  Set Location  From Esri Maps
      • Insert tab  Location panel  Set Location  From Bing maps
      • Insert tab  Location panel  Set Location  From File
    • Manage tab  Performance panel  Performance Analyzer

Civil 3D 2024.1 & 2024.3 – Corridor Workflow

New in 2024.3

Added support for creating multiple baselines while generating corridors:

  • Select multiple baselines during corridor creation.
  • Select two types of baselines, including alignments and profiles/feature lines, during the corridor creation process.
  • Expanded selection options for feature lines used as baselines: filter feature lines by Name, Style, Layer, and Site to narrow down the selection scope.
  • Edit multiple baselines and assemblies during corridor creation.

Note: when editing multiple baselines and assemblies, the shift key needs to be pressed continuously.

  • Add code set styles during corridor creation, eliminating the need to edit the corridor after creation.
  • Change multiple assemblies in the Parameter Tab or Corridor Properties Dialog. This allows multiple changes to assemblies for regions under the same baseline or for different baselines.

New in 2024.1

The following enhancements have been made to corridor transition workflows:

  • Added support for creating transitions across adjacent corridor regions that have gaps between them.

Note: Adding a small gap between adjacent corridor regions is a workaround to make sure one station does not have two sections and to ensure the section data is accurate.

Use a new command setting to control the gap tolerance value. When a gap tolerance is specified, you can create a transition that crosses gaps between corridor regions that are within that tolerance value.

  • Added support for copying and pasting transition sets. You can copy and paste transition sets in the same corridor (either to the same baseline or to a different baseline), and you can copy and paste them to different corridors and in different drawings.

In the Corridor Transition Panorama vista, right-click a transition or a transition set to access the copy and paste commands.

  • New selection options provide support for selecting a different corridor to work on and for selecting a baseline in the drawing.
    • Use the new corridor drop-down list to select a different corridor to work on while keeping the Corridor Transition Panorama open.
    • Use the new baseline selection button to select a baseline in the drawing. The baseline can be in the same corridor or in another corridor.
  • When a corridor transition is selected in the Corridor Transition Panorama, now the whole transition region is highlighted in the drawing instead of just the start and end stations.
  • The default value is now shown on the command line when creating a transition.
  • When exporting a corridor transition to CSV, the default CSV file name now includes both the drawing name and the corridor name.
  • Added support to highlight the corridor transitions in the drawing. Right-click the Corridors collection in the Prospector tree and click Show Transitions. This command enables you to quickly review all the transitions in the drawing.

Conclusion

I may not have covered all the features and there may not seem like a ton of new features, but the new features and enhanced features will help in your everyday workflows.

I would love to hear from you regarding the new features and features you would like to see added or enhanced, so feel free to call or email me anytime.

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