'The Civil Nodes' Feedback Thread

[Anton_Huizinga]

Here it is, the new package ‘The Civil Nodes’!

This brand new package is only available for Dynamo for Civil 3D 2025.1 or higher! It adds over 850 nodes to the library with lots of helpful functionality.

What it is:

Basically it a continuation of the Arkance Systems Node Library. Just a little history: Dynamo became available in Civil 3D 2020, but with a limited amount of nodes. Soon supplementary packages were build, like the Civil3DToolkit made by Paolo Serra, Camber from Zachri Jensen and I published the Arkance Systems Node Library. Together sometimes mentioned as the Holy Trinity
Some time ago, Dynamo for Civil 3D 2025.1 came out with hundreds of new nodes, a lot of them taken from Camber and Civil3DToolkit. That was great news, it made Dynamo much more valuable!

But the downside was that the mentioned packages didn’t work anymore. However, that does not make Dynamo any less valuable, just a little less suitable for power users. They are still missing nodes that did not find a way to the core of Civil 3D Dynamo.

Now The Civil Nodes is available as a package. It contains a large number of nodes from the Arkance Systems Node Library, mixed with some nodes from Camber (with the approval of Zachri) and some rebuilt nodes from Civil3DToolkit. Meanwhile, it is also known that Camber was republished with a 2025.1 version, which is great news for the users!

What The Civil Nodes contains:

Just a few examples. It is impossible to describe all 850+ nodes here (or wherever). The highlights are:

Legends! Select symbols, hatches and line objects in the drawing, map the layer name to a description (or put a decent description in the Layer Description) and put it somewhere on the drawing.

Results in:

Other great functionality reconstructed from the Civil3D Toolkit are the Get and Set Object Parameters, which are quite generic modification nodes, and the Object Data Tables, Fields and Records.

Result in:

And Photos with Exif Data can be read by The Civil Nodes:

Implemented from Camber are the SendCommand node, External References nodes, Alignment from Polyline, MultiView Blocks and References, Catchments and CatchmentGroups, and some minor nodes here and there.

From the Arkance Systems Node Library, just a few examples which found a way to The Civil Nodes:

Create or read AutoCAD Tables, and read Civil 3D Tables:

Create a Table from just a list of Coordinates, without any trouble.

Or create a QR Code and place it in the drawing:

Create Slope Patterns with just a few nodes:

And if you have KML (Google Earth) or OSM (Open Streetmap) files, just import them and use the administrative data to convert the geometry to Civil 3D.

And a Surface Elevations Analysis is just a handful of nodes away too:

And many, many more.

The nodes are highly structured in categories, you will find your way easily. The nodes sometimes have a large number of input ports, but as much as possible equipped with a default value.

How to get it:

The package can be downloaded from the Package Manager, just search for ‘The Civil Nodes’. And again as a reminder: only for Civil 3D 2025.1 or higher!

License and code:

The package is published under the CC-BY-ND 4.0 license.

The source code (C#/.NET8/VS Project) is not publicly downloadable, but if someone is interested, just send a PM or connect with me on LinkedIn.

More information can be found here (or in the future): https://thecivilnodes.com
My book Dynamo for Civil 3D will be updated soon, with detailed information about this new package.

Any question about this package, if you found a bug, if you want something explained, or if you want to show a great solution with the use of this package, please use this thread!

[patrick.ericson]

Thanks @Anton_Huizinga

[zachri.jensen]

Thanks so much for your efforts here, @Anton_Huizinga!

[Johnny.pronk]

Thanks for this amazing package! I recall you stating to adopt certain nodes from the now outdated civil3dtoolkit package. The one thing i’m personaly missing is the node that lets you create feature lines by polycurves. Any chance this could be added? This way the entirety of my script could run in civil 2025.1.

(Edit: Typo)

[Anton_Huizinga]

Thanks

I’ll put it on the wish list. Currently I have not much free time to work on the nodes, but as soon as I find some time, I’ll jump into the code.

Have to update my book too

[pumpaij]

Anton, when I’ve read that you are in the process of “reinstating” the lost nodes, I thought that this was such an awesome thing to do but this exceeds everything I was hoping for.
Thank you so much for all of this work - I can’t wait to get my hands on the Civil Nodes.

(I’m also in the process of working through your awesome book so you can expect me to be a contributing factor in something like 4 to 7 years. )

[Anton_Huizinga]

Thanks

I can’t remember if I promised to recreate all missing nodes, but my intention is to continue developing the node package (which you already can download from the Pacakage Manager, in case you haven’t found it). But nodes that are added to the core, or if there is not much interest in certain areas to be expected, I’ll rather work on other things.

So let me know which nodes are needed, or in case you test the existing nodes, let me know if things don’t work as expected!

[pumpaij]

Making demands for something that’s created as a voluntary side project is the last of my intentions!

If you keep a wish list, I might add that the GIS-nodes of the Toolkit were quite cool (eg for projecting shapefile-data to sectionviews). (But with the renewed OD-nodes that’s already possible again, the only difference is that the geometry has to be loaded into the drawing)

[ledg16]

Thanks, Anton. I just start out Dynamo and just bought your book from Amazon! I am struggling with Legend above. Is that ridiculous to ask if you can share your Legend script above? Many thanks. Le

[Anton_Huizinga]

Hi Le, not a problem to ask!

Here they are:

Example Legend.dwg (1.1 MB)
Example Legend.dyn (19.2 KB)

Btw, the book is not yet helpful if you work in Civil 3D 2025.1. Best is to use Civil 3D 2024 with the book to learn things, and when you understand the concept of Dynamo, you can switch to 2025.

Currently I am updating the book, but because of the many changes, it will take a while.

[ledg16]

Your examples of Legend massively help me to understand the concept of Dictionary now. Thanks heaps! Yes, I use both 2025 for Civil Node package and 2024 for learning from the book.

[Anton_Huizinga]

And there it is: an update!

Some nodes seemed not working anymore in the Civil 3D 2025.1 update, that is the reason for a new version. The latest version will only work in Civil 3D 2025.2, because the updated nodes are not backwards compatible.

And what is new?

It is possible to add XData to an object. In the Civil3DToolkit there was such a node, now you can use this functionality in Civil 3D 2025.

No need to specify the object’s type, Everything becomes a string except integers and doubles.

There is a node added to create a FeatureLine from a 2D or 3D Polyline.

A name and site is optional. The Template’s style and layer settings are applied to the FeatureLine.

It is now possible to update a single vertice in a 2D or 3D Polyline, without the need to recreate the whole thing.

And a new node to create Offset Polylines with an optional elevation correction.

This results in:

And at last, the generated color range for a Surface Elevation Analysis respects the provided start and end color.

[patrick.ericson]

Thanks for your effort @Anton_Huizinga
Love your work with helping us move existing graphs up to 2025!!
Wish you a Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year!

[javi_lapina]

Thank you very much for your efforts and Merry Christmas

[JFellows]

I’m running into an issue with the package not loading correctly.
Dynamo is currently only loading the drop-down nodes.
I have tried all of the package versions and none of them worked.
Currently the 2025.2.0 installed package is about 1.5 mb in size.
Is there some setting I need to change or is the download having issues.
Thanks

[jacob.small]

Searching the package name won’t expose all nodes typically. Best to look in the library directly - you can click on ‘the civil nodes’ to go to that section directly.

[JFellows]

I showed that as an example.
Here is what I’m getting from the Civil Nodes Dropdown.
It is only loading the dropdowns.

[JFellows]

I also downloaded the example project and grabbed the 2025.1.1 package version to test.
It kept giving me the error that the node couldn’t be resolved.

[jacob.small]

Can you post your dynamo settings file so we can confirm that you are only loading packages from one location to prevent any issues with multiple versions loading, and your most recent Dynamo log file so we can check for any loading conflicts?

You may be running into issues if you’re attempting to load old non-compliant packages or facing a DLL conflict with an add-in.

[JFellows]

Thanks for the help.
I’m not sure what caused it, but deleting the dynamo setting file and then adding in the package path fixed it.

Update: Upon further Examination, it looks like this package has issues loading from an external drive. it loaded fine when installed in roaming, but did not load along with the other packages when installed in the network drive.