Carlson 2015 HELP

Bump TTT

I wish I could offer some advice, but as someone who just started using Carlson a little less than a year ago, I can only say that I experienced a similar dilemma while making the switch. I've been too busy to try to work it out. I settled for just creating a custom toolbar with some of my commonly used routines.

I am not a fan of Carlson the way 98.5% of this board is. I miss the power of Civil 3D. If I were making a list of my Top 50 Carlson annoyances, which wouldn't take long, their interface would be very near the top.

Menuload

Many new users "miss the power of Civil 3D" simply because they do not know how to use Carlson products.
I'm not trying to be mean, simply stating facts because I have been there too.
I LOVED LDD!! My company wanted a sharp look at Carlson (mainly for economic reasons). The sent people to the seminars, etc. They all came back and said, "There's nothing there". "You lose a lot". yadda, yadda, yadda!! I was happy with LDD too, so I bought off on their crap. (They were BIG AutoCAD fans too.) But business is business.
I saw more potential than what they were reporting and when I questioned them they stated that they had not paid that much attention. I looked at the material they had bought from the class ands saw a lot of things that they did not mention. Biased opinions? Yep.
I did my own digging and found that, in my case, the ONLY thing that I lost was lisp. Not being a big lisp user, that was no real problem. (Intellicad has bought that ability back to Carlson).
Conclusion, It's different software. It does things differently. It looks different. It acts different. It will not adjust to you, you must adjust to it.
The days of taking a User's manual and teaching yourself ANY complex software package are LONG gone. Osmosis does not work on computer software knowledge. 99% of the "Things that Carlson cannot or does not do" occur because the end user does not know better.
The ONLY fix is training, and that you will probably have to do on your own because the bean counters cannot seem to understand that funds for training are the BEST money they will ever spend.
This is all like saying, "A Lamborghini is a piece od scat because I do not know how to fix one." Learn how to fix it and drive on.

I've read enough of your posts to realize you know what you're talking about. I agree with about 90% of what you say. However, I don't pine over LDD any more than I pine over a 486 workstation, Windows NT, or a T2. I haven't used LDD since 2002, and hopefully I'm never stuck using it again. It also is not anywhere near as powerful as Civil 3D. I have trained many people who were LDD diehards and who fought having to learn how to use Civil 3D. There is not a single one of them that after they had picked it up wasn't glad that they made the switch.

My last job before this one, the company that hired me let go of three of their four CAD people and hired me and one other person. The ones they let go were stuck on LDD, and were barely using it at all, still drawing profiles by hand. The company wanted to use Civil 3D. I trained the other new person first, another LDD guy. He loved Civil 3D. The one person they kept was next in line. She was an older lady, and she probably knew that she would be let go at some point in time. I was honest with her. I told her that if she learned Civil 3D she could put that on her resume and would not have trouble finding a job when the time came. She actually surprised me. By the time the company let her go, she could put together a surface and make profiles and sections. She didn't get as far as making assemblies and running a corridor, but she learned enough that she did indeed find a good job fairly quickly.

You don't mention having learned Civil 3D. I have been using Carlson for almost a year now. There is not anything in Carlson that has made me go "Wow!". IMO, they have some nice drafting routines, and their sections are pretty good, but I didn't like the profile sheets very much. Their field to finish routine is not any better than Civil 3D. The thing that I dislike most about Carlson is that it feels dated. It feels like I'm using a 2002 version of Autocad/LDD. Of course, all of that is just my opinion. With that, and $7, you can buy a coffee at Starbucks.

I remember many years ago reading an online discussion between Jennifer DiBona and James Wedding, debating whether or not Carlson's objects are dynamic. At the time, I wondered how there could be a difference of opinion. It's either dynamic or it isn't. Yes, I know I can attach reactors to my linework, but that slows down my projects that have just a few hundred points. Three jobs I've done lately have had over 10,000 points. There's no way I'm attaching reactors to all that linework. I agree with James. I don't think Carlson is truly dynamic. I know I will get labeled a sheep or whatever name y'all want to call me, but if any of you were reading my blog as I was learning Civil 3D you would know that's not the case. I stand by my statement. I miss the power of Civil 3D.

BlitzkriegBob, post: 334376, member: 9554 wrote: ...... I stand by my statement. I miss the power of Civil 3D.

Amen Bob, I think that most people's problem with C3D is that they are simply intimidated by the shear overwhelming nature of the beast, and are unwillling to invest the time to master it. And let me put a plug in for the SincPac add on, it adds most of the functionality that surveyors need and autodesk overlooked.

Randy