Carlson 2007 to 2014?

I currently have about 4 licences of Carlson Survey with intellicad in my office (on a "networked license" to enable every computer to use the program) This alone was a big help because party chiefs would all line up at the same few machines to process their raw data, which is not productive.

Not surprisingly, the Autocad engine is superior to the Intellicad, but the intellicad is so much more cost effective that i didn't even consider going for Autocad.

In terms of the program's stability, i have not had any issues of crashing or anything like that. We are running them on windows 7 and 8. Our coordinate files are usually anywhere from 150-400 points.

The biggest improvement for me from 2007 was the improvement of the Field-to-Finish. It finally does quite a bit of the basic line and symbol work.

In essence it does look the same, a few toolbar symbols have changed, but its not that difficult to catch on to.

I would definitely advise someone to move to 2014.

Hope this helps.

another thing to consider is that at 7 years old, they probably wont give you much in the way of a discount off full price. I have 2013 and like it very much.

I just installed Carlson Survey 2014 on my Boss's laptop and, for the FIRST time in my life, I will say you may actually want to look long and hard at the Intellicad version. In the embedded version you get to fight that ding-dang ribbon and plod through work spaces that don't exist. It's just not worth the aggrivation.(Plus, even though it's 2014 it only saves back to 2013??)
Carlson Survey made their improvements to the Field To Finish *.FLD file in 2007 and it has been a hard charger since then. You just have to figure out how to make it do what you want it to do. There's absolutely NO "limited abilities" to Field to Finish from 2007 on.
Coded correctly and set up properly you will get all of your line work, both as 2D and 3D , where needed, all of your blocks inserted along with their text labels, all of your control points with x,y,z, labels, all of your pipe inverts and sizes labeled and even the gates on your fences identified and labeled.
I don't mean to be rude, but whenever I hear someone speaking of the limited abilities of Field TO Finish, I tend to point ouy that the problem actually is THEIR limited knowledge on how to use the product. If I can make it hum along, you should be able to make it sing!!
Bottom line, make the move. Pretty soon AutoDesk will drop all support for 2007 and your clients will not be able to use your product. AutoDesk will kill the competition in ANY way it can. That's exactly why Carlson is teaming up with Intellicad.

The biggest improvement for me from 2007 was the improvement of the Field-to-Finish. It finally does quite a bit of the basic line and symbol work.

Mine does ALL of my linework, draws all of my 3D break lines at the same time, inserts all of my symbols and their associated text labels, labels pipe type, syze and inverts, imports all of my control point symbols with a listing of the x,y,z, values and the control point name, draws in all of my overhead utilities and pareking lot stripes, etc.
It's a fine dance between the proper use of the descriptor codes in the field and the set up of the FLD file. Once set up properly, all the hard stuff is done automatically. Keep the codes as simple as possible and sell them the the field guys so that they will use them and your time on the computer will be cut by 50% to 66%.

> It's a fine dance between the proper use of the descriptor codes in the field and the set up of the FLD file. Once set up properly, all the hard stuff is done automatically. Keep the codes as simple as possible and sell them the the field guys so that they will use them and your time on the computer will be cut by 50% to 66%.

Couldn't have said it better myself, I haven't quite figured out how to get things like buildings to join properly, i just set the codes to "nearest" and "closed tie" for them to make a figure. but here in NYC all the buildings are close to eachother so that method fails most of the time. I haven't quite mastered the "dance" yet.

> another thing to consider is that at 7 years old, they probably wont give you much in the way of a discount off full price. I have 2013 and like it very much.

We have 2013 and 2014 loaded. The bug fixes in 2014 don't outweigh the new bugs, so we'll stay with 2013. We started with 2008, so I can't really make a comparison to 2007.

Start your Building wit a "Building corner" code like BC.

BC+7
then run your shots
BC
BC
BC
Now you are ready to take that last corner shot that you want to make close on the first shot. Code it:
BC JPN(the point number of the first corner)

If your first corner shot was #1000, the code would be: BC JPN1000
(Note that the -7 to end the line is NOT used with JPN. Jon closes and ends the line.)

This works well on any closed feature like curb islands, etc.

thanks for the the tip, If i can get my FLD to a point I can make the software work wonders

> Now you are ready to take that last corner shot that you want to make close on the first shot. Code it:
> BC JPN(the point number of the first corner)
>
> If your first corner shot was #1000, the code would be: BC JPN1000
>
> This works well on any closed feature like curb islands, etc.

I actually prefer the "close" tag (typically CLO). The last shot on the building would be BC CLO and eliminates the need to know what the starting point number of the building is/was.

OOPS!! JPN will work, but what I should have entered was the CLO command. As long as you are running around the building in the same direction all the way around (clockwise or counterclockwise) you last shot will be coded "BC CLO".
Remember, once you start a line with a BC+7 the program will connect all of the next BC codes in order as it runs down the coordinate file. When you enter the BC CLO it will run back through the coordinate list to find the BC+7 and connect to that.
The JPN command is really what you would use if you mess up and reverse direction on your building shots. if your shots run from point number 100-101-102-103-104-215-214-213-212-500-501-520-503-506-100, the reversed shots at 215 will not be drawn, BUT it may pick back up at point 500 and continue until either a -7 or a CLO.
Clear as mud??
Just open a drawing on your computer and manually create some points using your descriptors and the +7, -7, JPN and CLO codes. Then run F2F and see what happens. Then the next fun thing will be learning to use multi-codes. That's where a LOT of the power is found!!