Vancouver, BC, Canada, October 15, 2026 – North Vancouver-based Softree Technical Systems today released RoadEng Version 12, used in more than 75 countries to locate and design resource and rural roads, from forest and mine roads to county roads and highways. The headline feature, Path Explorer AI, can now find optimized road networks, dramatically reducing earthworks and design time.
Path Explorer AI is a generative design tool first introduced in Version 11 to find optimal alignments for greenfield roads between a start and end point. In Version 12, it considers more inputs, including existing roads and waypoints, solves faster and can design a whole network at once rather than one road at a time.
Early feedback has been strong. “After a 15-minute live demo, one engineer told us what he’d just watched would have taken him more than 50 hours in his current software,” said Erin Wasney, Operations Director at Softree Technical Systems. “That demo was a smaller project, with a handful of endpoints and about 10 km of new road. What’s exciting is how well the tool scales. On an example wind farm project we benchmarked, with 130 turbine sites and more than 150 km of greenfield road, Path Explorer AI solved the network in about three hours.”
Version 12 also brings Softree’s hydrology tools directly into the Location module. Designers can see how a road affects surface drainage across the project area as they design, helping reduce its environmental impact, and can quantify catchment areas to culvert inlets without leaving the design.
Other updates include new grading tools, 3D road cut visualization and improved alignment management.
Long-time client Kevin Orpen, P.Eng., of PDM Services Ltd. puts it plainly: “I upgrade to each new version of RoadEng as soon as it’s available, because every release lets us do more. Open pit mine designs that used to take four to six weeks can now be done in a couple of days. I’d recommend Version 12 to any field engineer who wants to keep up.”
RoadEng Version 12 is available now. Path Explorer AI is available with Softree Optimal, the optimization add-on for RoadEng.
For more information about RoadEng Version 12, visit www.softree.com/version-12
About Softree Technical Systems
Softree Technical Systems is a Canadian civil engineering software company based in North Vancouver, BC, founded in 1989. Its flagship product, RoadEng, is used by engineers in more than 75 countries to design rural and resource roads for forestry, mining, renewable energy and infrastructure projects. Softree reinvests in research and development, including a partnership with the University of British Columbia Okanagan.
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Caption: RoadEng Version 12 3D design output