2014 Carlson OEM Survey

(1) Carlson will only do what you let it do. If it appears that it is taking over your polylines, go to the "options" selection in the polyline command and unselect the top option "Show Options on start-up" then set the "use current layer" option to kill the layer problem. Now when you draw a poly, be sure the desired layer is set as current.
As far as the drawing of buildings go, there are all sorts of options; everything from doing offsets from the baseline to the options under COGO. You'll find one you like.
(2)Project association tends to get lost when you copy a project from one computer to another. On the same machiene, it should hang around IF you create an *.ini file for your project. This will also allow your current .crd file to stay with the drawing. Look under SETTINGS, CARLSON SETTINGS, the GENERAL SETTINGS radio button, and check the box that says "Save Drawing .ini file".
(3) Carelson will convert the LDD MDB file, but it is generally easier to have the coordinates saved as a csv or txt file which Carlson will handle like a champ.(In 2007 LDD our coordinate default was a comma delimited .txt file. Get in that habit and you will have no further problems.)

If you are doing complicated buildings, check out the help files for "2D Polyline"
If you scroll down the page you will see some options under the extend mode sub-menu.

Start the draw 2D polyline routine by typing "2DP" at the command line.
Pick the beginning and end of the first face of the building.
Type "E" for extend and then continue to use the command line from there.
"R" then distance for 90°right
"L" then distance for 90° left
ect. ect.

It is a powerful command if you learn it.

> If you are doing complicated buildings, check out the help files for "2D Polyline"
> If you scroll down the page you will see some options under the extend mode sub-menu.
>
>
>
> Start the draw 2D polyline routine by typing "2DP" at the command line.
> Pick the beginning and end of the first face of the building.
> Type "E" for extend and then continue to use the command line from there.
> "R" then distance for 90°right
> "L" then distance for 90° left
> ect. ect.
>
> It is a powerful command if you learn it.

I'll still miss my old method, but I can get along doing it this way. Thanks!

I would still like to know if I can convert my LDT groups over. I'm not talking about importing an ascii or converting the LDT mdb.

In the full version there are several commands.

Line - AutoCAD command
Pline - AutoCAD command
2DP - Carlson command
3Dp - Carlson command

Does the Pline command not exist in your version?

Oh, "Point Groups"!! My bad.
All of that is handeled under Field to Finish. Really the easiest way is to create your own *.fld file and assign the groups there.
But seeing as you are coming from LDD, take a look under DRAW FIELD TO FINISH, down to EDIT CODES/POINTS, then to CODE TABLE SETTINGS, then select IMPORT LDD DESC KEYS. You can even create point groups using your project coordinate file. You can build a master point group file within field to finish for use on all of your projects.
What you really need to do is go to Jennifer DiBona's web site thatcadgirl.com and check out her training manuals. She has an outstanding manual on Field To Finish that will answer all of your questions. Her manual on configuring Carlson will be a big help too. Once you get Carlson set up to do all the stuff it can do for you, you will recoup the costs of the manuals on the very first job. I did and I am a 66 year old "Old Phart", so if I can do it, you should have no problem.

There is probably a way of tricking it to import the point groups under the point group manager.

I guess you could draw your points groups in LDD to separate layers, then create groups based upon that.

There are two ways to import.
By coordinate file and by point list file.
I'm trying to figure out what a "point list file" is.

I would assume it is a simple ASCII file formatted a specific way.
You could probably do some excel magic and bring them all in at once if that is the case.

> In the full version there are several commands.
>
> Line - AutoCAD command
> Pline - AutoCAD command
> 2DP - Carlson command
> 3Dp - Carlson command
>
> Does the Pline command not exist in your version?

In 2014 Carlson OEM "pl" "pline" "polyline (is not a valid command)" etc. envokes Carlson's 2dp command. Same goes for for a standard line, all that is available is Carlson's line command, not the native AutoCAD.

I understand how to assign point groups by fld to finish or by the point group editor. I want to be convert the LDT groups with out having to open the old project in LDT and write down how the groups were defined and manually input them into Carlson.

So you want to be able to import your point groups without opening the LDD project.

Not being familiar with LDD, where do the point groups definitions exist?

> I'm somewhat new to Carlson and still trying get the most out of this software.

My favorite thing about Carlson software is that the first 10% of the program will do things well enough to make you forget all about anything you used in the past.

[flash width=420 height=315]//www.youtube.com/v/pzEO47727bk?version=3&hl=en_US[/flash]

Start one side of the polyline go to edit and extend by distance , in the command you will find the Commands to punch around a building , L R etc.

Just came across this problem myself (problem 3 in the OP). An old project was done in Land Development Desktop, and within that project there was an MDB file for the Point Groups, entitled "Groups.MDB". It is a rather simple Microsoft Access database, and contains the names of the groups, the descriptions of the groups, the point numbers for each group, and the point numbers excluded from each group.

The workflow that I settled upon was to use Microsoft Excel 2007 (may work in other versions, but I don't know). Open a blank worksheet, and click on the Data tab in MS Excel, and Get External Data>From Access. Specify the file Groups.mdb (In LDD3, located in a folder titled COGO), and I found 3 tables within: 1) DESCKEYMAPS, 2) GROUPPROPS, and 3) GROUPS. For each table that you want to get external data from you have to repeat the process.

I know it isn't as easy as a conversion utility, but didn't seem to be too bad, so I thought I'd share it here. Would be glad to know if it helped anyone.

The alternative, of course, is to run the software that the groups were originally created with. I happened to be working on my laptop at home, and didn't have the install disks with me, so the option of loading LDD3 wasn't available to me in the moment. Not even sure I could load LDD3 on my newer Win7 Pro 64 bit machine.

Al

Use the autocad native polyline command and it still works the same. I just click the polyline button on the autocad draw toolbar.

You want to draw a building poly at 90å¡ offsets? COGO radio button, them down to "Draw Building envelope polyline".