The biggest challenge that Autodesk Civil 3D has been facing is how to incorporate information from base maps to other maps or to plan sheets. A Civil 3D drawing can quickly increase in file size with multiple 3D objects and entities within your model. The big file can cause bugs or errors during the working process, especially in big projects like highway projects, big land developments.

• How to make sure the design process runs smoothly without bugs?
• How to minimize redo work in plan set production?
• How to set up a process with many team member can work on the same project?
  

Civil 3D has a powerful and wonderful feature called “Data shortcuts”. Data Shortcut in Civil 3D can not only help to avoid putting too much data in a drawing and speed up the processing time of the model, but also can also increase the productivity of a scheme, allowing multiple users to access and use the shared 3D entities simultaneously, maintaining Civil 3Ds dynamic functionality across different drawings.

Furthermore, Data shortcuts allow us to link multiple model files to a production drawing. This has a multitude of benefits. Your model size is controlled, your data is kept current and all your linked shortcuts are all fully dynamic.

Data Shortcut in Civil 3D workflows work best by keeping single 3D objects in a single shortcut drawing. Multiple users working on different design elements can link to these models using the data shortcut option and they will remain linked to the current design.