PathSweeper vs Autodesk Vehicle Tracking: Browser Tool or AEC Collection Add-in?

If you search for Autodesk Vehicle Tracking, you probably have one of two questions. Is the add-in your office already gets with the AEC Collection good enough for your swept path checks? Or can a browser tool save you from buying a CAD seat?

The short version: if an AEC Collection seat is already on your desk, Vehicle Tracking is included and runs inside the Civil 3D or AutoCAD drawing you already work in, so keep using it. If it is not, Vehicle Tracking means buying the whole collection ($3,675 per year in the US as of July 2026) plus a Windows CAD workstation to run it on. PathSweeper runs in the browser with a free tier and a one-time Project Pass per project, and hands the result back to CAD as a layered DWG or DXF.

One thing up front: PathSweeper is our own product, built in Munich by Joël Marth (about PathSweeper). Every statement about Vehicle Tracking below comes from Autodesk's own product page, help documentation and press releases, listed in the sources; the pricing figure is dated and should be confirmed with Autodesk. There is a section on when Vehicle Tracking is the better choice, and we say plainly where it is.

At a glance

For the wider field, see our swept path analysis software comparison.

What Autodesk Vehicle Tracking is and where it runs

Autodesk Vehicle Tracking descends from AutoTrack by Savoy Computing Services. Autodesk announced the acquisition on 19 August 2013, describing AutoTrack as "a suite of software for vehicle swept path analysis and the design of parking areas and roundabouts", and announced Autodesk Vehicle Tracking 2014 on 7 November 2013. "Vehicle tracking" is also used as a plain term for swept path analysis itself (see our swept path analysis guide). It has nothing to do with GPS fleet tracking.

Technically, Vehicle Tracking is an add-in, not a standalone program. Autodesk's system requirements for the 2027 release list three host applications, AutoCAD 2027, Civil 3D 2027 and AutoCAD Architecture 2027, on 64-bit Windows 11 or Windows 10 version 1809 or later. The 2027 release lists only the 2027 hosts, and it runs only on Windows, inside one of those hosts. If your office runs Civil 3D for road design, Vehicle Tracking sits in the same drawing, which is its strongest argument.

PathSweeper runs in Chrome, Edge or Firefox with nothing to install, on any operating system with a current browser. The geometry engine runs inside your browser tab, and the free tier works without an account.

Licensing: AEC Collection only

Vehicle Tracking cannot be bought on its own. Autodesk sells it exclusively as part of the Architecture, Engineering and Construction Collection, the bundle that also carries Civil 3D and Autodesk's other AEC products. As of July 2026, Autodesk's US page listed the collection at $3,675 per year; prices differ by country and change over time, so confirm the current figure for your region on Autodesk's site or with your reseller before you budget on it. We are not quoting UK or Australian figures here because we could not verify them on Autodesk's own pages at the time of writing.

Two further routes exist. Autodesk offers a 30-day free trial of Vehicle Tracking, which needs a supported AutoCAD-family host installed on a Windows machine. And Autodesk Flex sells tokens that are charged for each 24 hours the product is in use, an option for genuinely occasional use.

PathSweeper's model is different in kind rather than degree. The free tier has no time limit and no account requirement: four generic standard vehicles (passenger car, delivery van, 2-axle truck, city bus; templates with typical dimensions, not design vehicles from a national guideline), PDF, JPEG and PNG site plans with scale calibration, distance and angle measurement, and PNG, JPEG and PDF export. The Project Pass is a one-time payment of €39 per project and adds the national design-vehicle libraries, the use of custom vehicles in that project, DWG, DXF and 12d XML upload, DXF and DWG export, satellite imagery and the A3 plan set. The Annual Pass covers every project for €399 per year and is cancellable yearly.

If your office already pays for the AEC Collection

This is the honest part, and it is why an office that already holds the collection has little reason to look elsewhere: if your firm subscribes to the AEC Collection for Civil 3D, Vehicle Tracking is already included. There is no extra licence to buy, no procurement step and no second tool to learn for the people who live in Civil 3D all day. For a highways team producing junction and roundabout designs inside Civil 3D, that is hard to beat, and we would not argue otherwise.

Where PathSweeper still earns a place in such an office is at the edges of that seat:

• The people without the seat. Architects, planners, site managers and junior staff who need a quick access check but do not have an AEC Collection licence or a Windows CAD workstation. PathSweeper's free tier answers "does the refuse vehicle get round this" on a PDF site plan in a few minutes, without touching a licence pool.
• Work away from the workstation. A laptop at a client meeting, a Mac, a site visit. PathSweeper runs on any of them.
• A vehicle that is not in the library. PathSweeper's custom vehicle creator builds a vehicle from a datasheet in the browser, including articulated combinations. Building and saving custom vehicles is free with a signed-in account; using one in a project needs the Project Pass.
• Round trips with other offices. If the swept path has to go to someone who does not have Vehicle Tracking, PathSweeper exports a layered DXF or DWG with a placeable reference point that opens in AutoCAD, Allplan and ArchiCAD.

If none of those apply to you, keep using Vehicle Tracking.

Feature comparison

The Vehicle Tracking column follows Autodesk's help documentation and press pages as of 14 October 2026 and, for licensing, Autodesk's product and collection pages as of July 2026. "Not stated" means we found no statement on Autodesk's pages, which is not the same as confirmed absent; if a row decides your workflow, check it in Autodesk's 30-day trial.

Platform and licensing

Vehicles

Manoeuvres and kinematics

Import and export

Custom vehicles

Both tools let you build a vehicle the library does not have, so this is not the dividing line it is against some browser competitors. Autodesk's help states that "Vehicle Tracking includes a wide range of predefined vehicles" and that the Vehicle Wizard and the Advanced Editor "allow you to create or edit almost any vehicle"; Autodesk library vehicles cannot be edited directly, but you can "edit a copy", which Vehicle Tracking places in the Pool.

PathSweeper's custom vehicle creator runs in the browser. You enter wheelbase, overhangs, width and the steering lock or the printed turning circle from a datasheet, pick a rigid vehicle, a tractor and semi-trailer, a truck and drawbar trailer or an articulated bus, and the vehicle is available for swept path analysis straight away (free to build; the Project Pass is needed to use it in a project, as above). So both tools can build the vehicle. The difference is where: on a Windows CAD workstation with an AEC Collection seat, or in any browser.

Reverse manoeuvres and articulated vehicles

Reversing an articulated vehicle is the hard case in every swept path tool. Autodesk's help recommends AutoDrive for articulated vehicles, notes that Manual Drive "requires a degree of skill when reversing", and says that the Script tool "has no intelligence to deal with the over-articulation that will rapidly develop" in reverse.

PathSweeper models reverse manoeuvres for rigid vehicles and for articulated combinations, with the articulation angle monitored at every hitch; the engine widens the arc when a combination would otherwise over-articulate, so the preview never shows a manoeuvre the vehicle could not drive. How the combination types differ is set out in our post on articulated vehicle swept paths, and the steering model in the post on rate-limited steering.

On accuracy: before release we cross-checked PathSweeper's independently developed engine against reference exports from AutoTURN Online for all 13 German RBSV 2020 design vehicles; the method and the per-vehicle table are in our engine validation report. We have not run a comparable cross-check against Autodesk Vehicle Tracking and make no claim about its accuracy either way.

Import and export: staying in CAD versus a round trip

Vehicle Tracking's whole point is that there is no exchange step. The swept path is drawn as native objects in the DWG you are already working in, on the Civil 3D alignment or the AutoCAD layout you designed, and it plots with the rest of the sheet.

PathSweeper needs a round trip, and is built to make it short. On the free tier you load a PDF, JPEG or PNG site plan, calibrate the scale against a known dimension and draw. With the Project Pass you upload the DWG, DXF or 12d XML directly (DWG files up to 80 MB), place a reference point on a feature you can find in your drawing, and export a layered DXF or DWG whose origin is that point. The file contains the swept envelope, the path, the vehicle outlines and a data block with each vehicle's dimensions on named layers; your CAD colleague inserts it at the reference point and it lands in place. The export opens cleanly in AutoCAD, Allplan and ArchiCAD. There is also a standalone free DWG to DXF converter.

When Vehicle Tracking is the better choice

Choose Vehicle Tracking if your office already holds AEC Collection seats and the people doing the swept path checks are the same people working in Civil 3D or AutoCAD. The add-in is included, it works in the drawing you are already in, and nothing has to leave the file.

Choose it if you need parking layout or roundabout design (as Autodesk describes the product), light rail or aircraft swept paths, or vertical clearance checks in 3D. PathSweeper does none of those; it is a swept path tool for road vehicles, in 2D.

Choose it if a client or authority asks for Vehicle Tracking output by name.

And if you want the same CAD-hosted workflow in MicroStation, or a CAD add-in outside the AEC Collection, the comparison you want is with Transoft's AutoTURN desktop products, which we cover on our AutoTURN alternative page.

Switching notes

If you are moving swept path work out of Vehicle Tracking, or adding PathSweeper next to it, these are the practical points:

• Nothing imports from Vehicle Tracking. PathSweeper does not read Vehicle Tracking's vehicle files or saved manoeuvres. You upload the site plan (DWG, DXF, 12d XML, PDF or image) and redraw the paths.
• Vehicles. The design vehicles in PathSweeper's national libraries carry the name of their source document, so a DB32 or FTA vehicle, an AASHTO design vehicle or an Austroads B-double can be matched by name. For anything else, enter the datasheet dimensions in the custom vehicle creator.
• The reference point decides the round trip. Place it on a building corner or a kerb return before exporting, and tell whoever inserts the DXF which feature it is.
• Parking and roundabout design stay in Vehicle Tracking. PathSweeper has no tools for either.
• Running both is fine. The free tier needs no account, so the Civil 3D team can keep Vehicle Tracking while the rest of the office checks access on PDFs in the browser. Our switching guide for AutoTURN Online users covers the same CAD round trip step by step and applies here as well.

If you work with the UK, US or Australian libraries, the guides on UK design vehicles, AASHTO design vehicles and Austroads design vehicles say which documents each PathSweeper library is transcribed from.

The bottom line

Both tools answer the basic question: will this vehicle make this turn. Vehicle Tracking answers it inside the AEC Collection and the Autodesk drawing; PathSweeper answers it in the browser for anyone, and hands the result back to CAD as a DXF or DWG.

Autodesk, AutoCAD, Civil 3D and Vehicle Tracking are trademarks or product names of Autodesk, Inc.; AutoTURN is a trademark of Transoft Solutions Inc. They are named here only to identify the software being compared. PathSweeper is not affiliated with or endorsed by Autodesk or Transoft Solutions, and neither company has reviewed this page.

For the browser-to-browser comparison see PathSweeper vs AutoTURN Online, and for the geometry behind all of these tools our swept path analysis guide. The fastest way to judge PathSweeper is to open it with one of your own plans; the free tier needs no account.