The issue package
- Survey and coordinate basis
- Grading plans and profiles
- Storm drainage and detention study
- Site drawing set with its revision trail
- Earthwork and utility quantity schedule
Civil, survey and infrastructure
Start with the ground. Finish with a plan.
See how a land development team takes survey data through terrain, grading, drainage, drawing production, review and quantities.
Eight separate open-source apps in CadCraft Studio. Not SuperCad Studio, the separate all-in-one product.
What this firm needs to deliver.
The client wants a subdivision or a commercial site designed. The civil engineer needs trusted existing conditions, workable grades, drainage, and a plan set that can be reviewed and that a contractor can price.
People in the chain
- Survey, existing conditions
- Civil design, grading
- Hydrology and utilities
- CAD technician, sheets
- QA reviewer, issues
- Estimator, quantities
A responsible hand-off at every stage.
Each step names the person, the app and the result. The story is how the office delivers work, not every engineer using every tool.
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Establish existing conditions
Bring in supported points and data, build the surface and breaklines, and check the terrain, the units and the coordinate reference. Least-squares survey adjustment is built for 0.8.
- Hand-off
- Existing terrain, survey assumptions and the reference network.
- Engineering check
- Avoid silent coordinate shifts: compare known control points.
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Develop alignments and grading
Lay out roads, profiles, corridors and finished grades, and compare the cut and fill.
- Hand-off
- Design surface, plan and profile data, and an earthwork estimate.
- Engineering check
- Check slopes, tie-ins and accessibility or local criteria.
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Resolve water and utilities
Place storm drains and detention, and work through runoff and hydraulic assumptions where the 0.8 tools cover them: detention ponds and hydrograph routing are built, geotechnical checks are built.
- Hand-off
- Drainage layout, pipe and detention studies.
- Engineering check
- Write down the storm criteria, return periods and design methods used.
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Prepare the drawings
Compose site and detail sheets with notes, dimensions and plot settings for the drawing package.
- Hand-off
- DWG and DXF working files and PDF sheets.
- Engineering check
- Check scale, north, labels, layers and plotting.
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Review the design
Overlay or compare plan revisions, and make and resolve coordinated review comments.
- Hand-off
- Reviewed plan set and tracked changes.
- Engineering check
- A review is not agency approval.
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Measure the scope
Take off paving, pipe lengths, earthwork and structures from reviewed inputs.
- Hand-off
- Itemized quantities and estimate assumptions.
- Engineering check
- Check where each quantity came from and the field tolerances.
See it in the apps.
Two short silent recordings from the real apps, one for each half of the story.
What the client gets.
A good case study ends with files and decisions, not a rotating 3D object.
What this example does not claim
Drainage results need local criteria and an engineer's review. A generated plan is not permit approval, and it is not a survey certification.
The software is free. Building it is not.
CadCraft is open source, and Community has every app and every feature, for personal work and paid client work alike. An owned license is a permanent commercial license in your name, from $1, and it pays for the people building the Great Eight and what comes after it. It adds no features: nothing is held back from Community.
The Team Cloud Plan is a separate service. It will add team seats, cloud saving and sync.