Civil Engineer choosing between Civil 3D and regular AutoCad?

Hey everyone. This is my first post, so bare with me. I'm currently a Civil Engineer with one more year left until EIT certification, and I'm looking to master one of the two softwares in the next couple years. Aiming to do some freelance work, I need to choose the right program. Should I master Autocad 2010 before jumping into the realm of Civil 3D 2010? Regarding potential freelance work, which one is more practical to learn and master? Thanks for all of your responses.

Cheers!

Well, Civil 3D is AutoCAD. It has some extra functionality relating to site design, but anything you can do in "vanilla" AutoCAD you can do in Civil 3D.

My advice would be to learn vanilla AutoCAD first. The civil stuff will be much harder if you don't understand the foundation it's built on.

If you 'master' AutoCad Civil 3D then you will have effectively mastered AutoCad also.

I'd start with AutoCad first to learn the basics as most courses/books that teach AutoCad Civil 3D assume you have some knowledge of AutoCad already.

If you are a structural engineer Civil 3D won't be of as much benefit to you. For general civil engineering work however, Civil 3D is certainly the better program to choose as it is all of AutoCad with added civil functionality (surfaces, alignments, cross sections, pipe networks etc).

with Civil 3D you can switch to the normal AutoCad interface, but honestly, when you work with the Civil 3D layout/ribbon, thats probably the one you will stick with!

Civil 3D can do so much more than you can do in Vanilla CAD. In fact, the workflow is totally different. Advice, if your a Civil Engineer, then civil 3D is the way to go!