Technically Speaking

CAD News for Govies is a new feature on Acronym that scans thousands of industry articles to present you with a regular source of CAD and GIS news, information and ideas that impact the public sector.

Civil 3D contains many engineering tools for roadway design. One of these tools is the Intersection wizard. The wizard walks the user step by step through the intersection design process and parametrically designs three or four way intersections. In addition to intersection design, the wizard defines widening for incoming, outgoing, or both lane types. This article describes the use of the intersection wizard to create a four way intersection that maintains each road’s crown elevation.

Many professionals are unaware how to troubleshoot, load, or configure their devices and will turn to their IT department for help. Doing so results in lost time, frustration, and third party assistance. Now there is a simple solution that CAD and GIS users can practice to configure their mobile apps.

Last week, Autodesk announced its 2014 software portfolio line-up live on the web. So what impact will we see for the public sector? As expected, there remains a big focus on Autodesk suites – a more cost effective way to purchase complete solutions across a variety of industries. So what’s new? Here’s a quick re-cap.

Hearing a lot of buzz about LiDAR lately? We’ve been blogging about the benefits of LiDAR for a wide variety of public sector projects for some time, but it seems that only now is LiDAR getting the attention it deserves. In fact, according to a recent article by Government Computer News (GCN), LiDAR (which stands for Light Detection and Ranging) is revolutionizing how federal, state and local government agencies for mapping and geospatial projects. LiDAR, a remote sensing system used for mapping the surface of the earth, has been around for decades, but it’s only in the past few years that it’s undergone a boom and is now at the heart of many government data gathering projects – from mapping desert terrain in Afghanistan to creating forest height maps.

Hurricane Sandy caused major damage in New York and New Jersey in October 2012. In this video, New Jersey Chief Information Officer Steven Emanuel talks about the storm's impact on critical state computer systems and lessons learned from the event.