The RoadEng package already includes some very precise calculations that, once the context is understand, can be easily laid out to display a "best practice" design. When Optimal kicks in, the same presentation is improved upon seamlessly. The various options are therefore an additional improvement to something that has meat to it, with a final alignment that is provided with the confidence necessary to proceed with construction. The next flip is to download the final version into a DTM file and the survey crew proceed, within a 2 cm accuracy, to deliver the model which for all extensive purposes is the best possible vertical alignment, a field engineer's dream.

The best features of RoadEng are it's ability to handle large amounts of survey data and the speed that you can take a concept to a finished design. We tend to deal with large amounts of LiDAR data. Civil3D has implemented point clouds and they work OK but if you are building large surfaces we have noticed that C3D will actually thin your data and won't use all the points. Worse yet is that it doesn't tell you that it's doing this. With RoadEng always uses all the points. Sometimes if you have too many points it will crash but then you can go back and thin the data in areas that don't matter as much. You have full control. We have tried doing corridors in C3D but they just take so much longer to set up and to finish a design. All of the volume and drawing out puts from RoadEng are pretty much fully automated. I can run a first draft of a 10km road over tricky terrain in one day with RoadEng complete with volume outputs and a full set of drawings. There's no way I could do that in any other program.

I like the ease of use and the output format.