The software available on the market today has come a long way from the early years of computer programs. In this article we’ll step through the evolution of civilcad, a popular and Australian-developed solution that has a long history and is today known as MAGNET Office, which now forms part of the MAGNET Systems Workflow.

Cliff Stewart is a land and mine surveyor with more than 30 years’ experience in land development projects. During his career, he’s also worked on 13 mine sites and is authorised for all aspects of underground and open pit mine surveying.

As the Founder and Managing Director of Stewart Surveys, which was established in 1985 in Gunnedah NSW, Cliff remembers his first purchase of a CAD program that same year, which at that time was called CivilDes.

CivilDes began as a level book reduction program and was launched circa 1982.

Remember floppy disks?

“The computer came with the software and had virtually no memory,” he recalls. “The software was on five-and-a-quarter inch floppy disks. Every time you used it, you had to put in a floppy with program files and then another to store your data because the computer wasn’t able to store either,” he added.

The crisp, multi-coloured graphics surveyors are accustomed to today were certainly not available in the early days.

“There wasn’t much in the way of graphics,” Mr Stewart said. “It basically calculated and plotted closes, long sections, cross sections and so on.”

Data collectors for use in the field were large and cumbersome. “My first plotter was an A3 tablet. We used to stick the A3 plans together and trace the final,” Mr Stewart said. “In 1986 we bought a Housten pen plotter – it only held one pen and you had to change it to get different thicknesses.”