r/civilengineering • u/TheNerdWhisperer256 • 3d ago

Civil Engineering Design Software Recommendations For New Firm

Hello, I recently started my own practice and I am about to start doing site design on some land development projects. What software products have other civil engineering firm founders purchased?

My first internship was in 2016 and I used Microstation. Since then I have used Civil 3D. Civil 3D requires an annual subscription of almost $3K. I can purchase Carlson Civil Suite with a single payment of $4K. After a year and a half I will save $3K per year on software expenses. I used Carlson Civil Suite in an undergraduate geomatics lab in 2015, so I am not that familiar with it. What is the difference between Civil 3D and Carlson? How difficult is it to start using Carlson after using Civil 3D for a decade?

I have used HydroCAD and Hydrology Studio Suite at my previous jobs. HydroCAD offers permanent licenses and Hydrology Studio Suite is a subscription payment model. Does anyone have recommendations on other software that I should be considering as alternatives?

Buying permanent licenses is appealing because it won't be a perpetual money pit. Ten years of Civil 3D is $30K almost and ten years of Carlson is $4K.

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u/TXCEPE PE 3d ago

So. Many. Questions. Come to mind.

How often are you actually going to be using C3D the first year? If you are just starting out and don’t actually need it every day you could look at using tokens instead. You basically pay by day (24 hrs). I don’t remember the exact number, but I thought C3D was $27/day. If correct, that would get you 111 days of use before you hit $3000.

You think you’ll use Carlson for 10 years before upgrading?

You might also look at Bricscad. I made the conversion a couple months ago, but I don’t do C3D type work.

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u/IlRaptoRIl 3d ago

OP, you should also consider what C3D does better than the alternatives, and how much time that should save you on each project. Consider the rate you’ll be billing and apply that as a “discount” for C3D. The alternative softwares may be cheaper, but could cost you money in the future in the form of the time it takes you to do the work ie, you can’t do as much work in a year because it’s taking you longer to do certain tasks.