How current and accurate is the contour and flood data?

Layers come straight from the source agencies, USGS for elevation and NHD, FEMA for NFHL flood zones, and USDA NRCS for soils, so they carry the same currency and accuracy your reviewers already expect. For final design grades you still tie to a field survey, which you can import alongside the public layers.

Can I bring in survey and sub-consultant CAD files in State Plane?

Yes. Import DXF, Shapefile, GeoPackage, GeoJSON, or CSV and the platform reprojects from your State Plane zone, UTM, or any EPSG code to WGS84 on import, so survey topo and franchise-utility files line up with the public layers automatically.

Civil Engineering

Site context assembled before design starts

Civil and site engineers need a defensible picture of what is already on the ground, contours, soils, drainage, floodplain, easements, and buried utilities, before a single grade is set or a pipe is laid out. Smart Site Plan assembles that existing-conditions base map in the browser by pulling authoritative public layers onto your site and letting you measure grade, query constraints, and hand a clean context package to the design team.

Start free Talk to sales

Site engineerCivil design engineerStormwater engineerProject engineer

An existing-conditions base map on the reclaimed quarry pad: soil units, drainage areas, the proposed storm network, and limits of disturbance

Real Civil engineering work over Buncombe County, NC, captured in the product

The old way

Existing conditions get pieced together from agency downloads, a folder of soils PDFs, and a CAD file nobody is sure is current, so days go to hunting before the engineering starts. By the time grading begins, the floodplain line and the easement strip are half-remembered notes rather than layers on the plan.

With Smart Site Plan

Build the existing-conditions base map first

The data, already on the map

Drawn from 20 million open datasets, one click each. No agency portal hunting, no format wrangling.

USGS 10-meter elevation contours USGS Soil survey (SSURGO) with hydrologic groups USDA NRCS NHD streams and drainage network USGS NFHL flood zones and base flood elevations FEMA Recorded easements and rights-of-way County records Public utility lines (water, sewer, storm) Local utilities Parcels and ownership County assessor

Workflows

How Civil engineering work gets done

End to end, in the browser, on one map.

Build the existing-conditions base map

1. Open Data
Add USGS contours, NRCS soils, NHD streams, and FEMA flood zones scoped to the project boundary in one pass.
2. Import
Bring in the survey topo or a sub-consultant DXF, reprojected from State Plane or UTM to WGS84 on import.
3. Measure
Check elevation and grade along the natural drainage paths and across the steepest slopes on the site.
4. Style
Color the soils by hydrologic group and label the contour interval so the base reads cleanly for the design team.
5. Export
Export the assembled context as DXF for CAD on Pro and as an HD PDF context sheet for the project file.

Stormwater and floodplain constraints check

1. Open Data
Load FEMA NFHL flood zones, base flood elevations, and the NHD receiving stream over the site.
2. Draw
Draw the contributing drainage area over the contours and read the basin acreage from the live area readout.
3. Smart Query
Filter the soils and flood-zone features by attribute to isolate the regulated zones and the high-infiltration hydrologic groups, then read each selected feature's area from its readout.
4. Share
Send a view-only link of the floodplain and drainage map to the reviewer and the owner for sign-off.

Utility tie-in and easement coordination

1. Open Data
Add public water, sewer, and storm utility lines plus recorded easements onto the base map.
2. Smart Query
Filter the utility and easement features to isolate the mains and strips that touch the buildable area.
3. Measure
Measure the run from each proposed connection to the nearest existing main to scope the tie-in.
4. Share
Send the survey and architecture leads a view-only link to the conflict points so both resolve them from the same map.

What you can do

Read the grade off the existing surface

Drop USGS 10-meter contours on the site, then measure elevation and grade along any proposed flow path or driveway alignment to see fall, high points, and the natural drainage divide while you frame up early constraints. The 10-meter data is right for spotting natural drainage divides and ruling sites in or out early, but it is too coarse for final grading and gravity-drain decisions, so tie those to a field survey you can import alongside the public layers.

Map the drainage and stormwater context

Layer NHD streams, FEMA NFHL flood zones, and NRCS soils with their hydrologic groups to define the receiving water, the regulated floodplain, and how the site soils infiltrate. Draw the contributing drainage area over the contours and read its size with a live area readout to seed runoff and detention calculations.

Pin down constraints before layout

Pull recorded easements, parcels, and public utility lines onto the base map so the buildable envelope, the setback from a sewer main, and the strip you cannot grade in are explicit from day one. Use Smart Query to filter parcels or constraint features by attribute so the team designs around what is real, not around an assumption.

Coordinate the utilities you have to tie into

Bring agency water, sewer, and storm lines into the same view as your proposed alignment, then measure the distance and depth context to the nearest tie-in point and connection. Import a dry-utility DXF from a sub-consultant, reprojected on the fly from State Plane, so franchise utilities and your civil layout share one coordinate frame.

The capabilities Civil engineering teams lean on

Authoritative base layers

Contours, soils, NHD hydrography, FEMA flood, easements, and utilities come from the source agencies, so the existing-conditions map holds up in review.

Grade and drainage math

Measuring elevation, grade, and contributing area in the same window turns slope and runoff questions into numbers before the design surface is ever built.

CAD round-trip

DXF import with on-the-fly reprojection, plus DXF export on Pro and HD PDF export from Personal, keeps the base map in step with the design platform the rest of the team drafts in.

One shared context

View-only share links let the survey, architecture, and review teams read the same constraints map rather than trading static exports.

In practice

Grading a sloped pad in Wake County

A site engineer working a parcel near Raleigh in Wake County, North Carolina, adds USGS 10-meter contours, NRCS SSURGO soils, and the NHD drainage network. The grade down the back of the lot shows a steady five percent fall toward the stream, and the contributing drainage area drawn over the contours sizes the detention basin. Before the base goes to the design team, a soils query confirms the basin sits on a low-infiltration hydrologic group, and the whole context goes out as a DXF and an HD PDF.

What changes

Existing conditions assembled in an afternoon, not a week of portal hunting
Floodplain, easements, and utilities on the plan from day one, not discovered in review
Grade and drainage divides measured before the grading design starts
One coordinate frame for survey, agency, and sub-consultant data
A clean context package the whole design team works from

Civil engineering, answered

No. It builds and queries the existing-conditions base map, the contours, soils, drainage, floodplain, easements, and utilities, then hands it off as a DXF export on Pro and an HD PDF from Personal. Your detailed grading, surface, and pipe design still happens in your CAD platform.

Bring Civil engineering work onto one map

Start free and see your own Civil engineering data on it in minutes: pull the datasets, run the workflow, and ship the deliverable, all in the browser.

Start free Try it, no account

Or skip the tour. Type any address.

Opens the live map at that exact spot. No account, no install.