Sarah’s heart sank. Phase 2 had been a disaster—retaining walls built where there should have been swales, storm drains that flowed uphill (according to the neighbors’ flooded basements). The developer was blaming the engineering firm. Henderson was blaming the previous junior engineer, who had quit. Now, it was her mess.
"Give me an hour," she said, not looking away from the screen. Autodesk AutoCAD 2004 --land Desktop -civil Design
The year was 2004. Sarah Klein, a newly minted civil engineer, stared at her screen. On it glowed the familiar, utilitarian gray workspace of Autodesk Land Desktop. To her left, a stack of dog-eared survey notes; to her right, a half-empty cup of coffee that had gone cold hours ago. Sarah’s heart sank
"You fixed the drainage."
She started by digitizing the old 1972 plat map as an underlay. But instead of tracing lines, she used the Survey Query tool. One by one, she entered the old bearing and distance calls from the yellowed mylar into the Line by Bearing/Distance command. N89°34'22"E, 215.37 feet. The software snapped each line into place with a precision the old surveyor could only have dreamed of. Henderson was blaming the previous junior engineer, who