Civil3d.com is the blog of James Wedding, P.E. (that’s me) along with a number of other authors. Raider Consulting is my consulting company, but I’m not a reseller, nor affiliated with any of them. Some of the authors here do work in the reseller channel, but don’t hold that against them. This site will be free for the forseeable future, and you can count on the best articles, tips, and lessons on getting the most from your software investment. If you should ever want more, drop me an e-mail, I’d be happy to discuss a office visit or phone call to get your team going in the right direction.
I’ve been asked a number of times how I wound up with civil3d.com, so here’s the Reader’s Digest version. At one of the earliest gunslingers for the product, a name hadn’t even been chosen yet. As part of the weeks activities, they ran a number of names by us, as they had been with focus groups and other members of industry. The product was simply called Vine at this point, and this was the 2004 release cycle.
On the last day of Gunslinger meetings, there is typically about two hours of open dialog, “What did you like? What didn’t you like? What’s still missing? What’s your favorite new tool?” type stuff. There have been some spectacular rants during these meetings, and some good smackdowns. It has never gotten ugly, but I think tense would be a fair assessment.
During this particular wrap-up session, someone comes in to announce they’ve chosen a name. Civil3d. I’m sitting at a computer, so my immediate reaction is www.civil3d.com. And what appears? A blank holding page? An Autodesk logo? Nope. This. Mining software. (Thanks Internet Archive!) Are you kidding me? Don’t you people Google? I was dumbfounded, but that’s the way it was.
Fast-forward to January of 2006. I’m telling this story to a Jason Hickey, laughing as I type www.civil3d.com, expecting the same thing. Instead, up comes a “This Domain for Sale” page. Done. Bought, and now blogged. And no, Autodesk has never asked for it back, or offered to buy it. Bentley on the other hand….
Over the past few years, this blog has seen it’s share of authors: me, Nick Zeeben, Dana Probert, Mark Scacco, Joshua Modglin, Eric Chappel, Matt Kolberg, Chris Fugitt, and now we’re adding more. Thanks for being part of the community, and let us know if there’s something we can do to make Civil3d.com better.
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