Spotlight: Forma Street Design, and Civil 3D as a connected client
Autodesk is putting early street design in Forma and making Civil 3D a Forma Connected Client. What civil and BIM teams should try in the closed beta.
Yesterday we covered Autodesk’s Revit 2027 AI and Forma shift. The civil half of that Autodesk University announcement is a different product: Forma Street Design, plus Civil 3D joining Revit as a Forma Connected Client.
That is the story BIM and civil leads should actually test. Most building jobs are also civil jobs. Roads, utilities, terrain and the stuff you cannot see underground set what the building can do. Autodesk’s Amy Bunszel note is blunt about it. AEC Magazine called Street Design the genuinely new product in the briefing.
What shipped, and what did not
Nothing shipped to production seats. Autodesk opened a closed-beta waitlist. The tool is meant for complete streets, bike and pedestrian work, intersections and mobility corridors — the optioneering that currently dies in a rigid Civil 3D file when a client asks for a bus bulb-out in the room.
The claimed loop is: pull GIS, terrain, adjacent buildings and property lines into Forma; change alignments, lane widths and curve radii live; watch plan and section stay in sync; run swept-path checks with Autodesk Vehicle Tracking; then carry alignments, assemblies and sub-assemblies into Civil 3D. Kimley-Horn’s Mats Dale, quoted by Autodesk, said the test that mattered was drawing an intersection concept in Forma and bringing it into Civil 3D without starting over.
A shared geolocation engine is supposed to keep that location data consistent across Forma, Revit and Civil 3D. Deeper Fugro GeoDin / GroundIQ and Esri ArcGIS hooks are the subsurface and geospatial layer. Those are the parts that, if they work, stop a site model and a road model living in two coordinate systems until week 20.
What a BIM or civil lead should do
Join the waitlist only if the firm already loses time rebuilding streets between planning and detailed design. Pick one non-sensitive corridor. Ask three questions: does the geometry survive the Civil 3D handoff; does geolocation stay honest next to the Revit site; and can a stakeholder session change a lane without a two-day rebuild.
Do not move the production civil model into a beta cloud because the slide said “no rework.” Street Design is early. Civil 3D remains the record. Keep the same rule as the rest of the Forma stack: firm-controlled access, a human check before anything is issued.
Start at Autodesk’s Forma Street Design post and the AU 2026 AEC note.
Frequently asked questions
What is Forma Street Design?
A cloud-based early-stage street design tool inside Autodesk Forma. Civil and transportation teams can lay out lanes, intersections and turning movements in real site context, then continue the work in Civil 3D.
Is it available today?
No. Autodesk opened a waitlist for a closed beta on 15 September 2026. Pilot firms, including Kimley-Horn, have already used early builds on live work.
Does this replace Civil 3D?
Autodesk says no. Civil 3D stays the detailed engineering tool. Forma is the place to iterate options earlier, then hand the geometry across instead of redrawing it.
Does AI generate the street?
Not in the design workflow. Autodesk is explicit that Street Design itself is not AI. Forma Board can still produce AI renderings for stakeholder meetings.