Made the jump last night to Carslon Civil Suite Intellicade version. Am a long time ACAD user, but tried my first project in Carlson, a small boundary job.
Am very impressed and was able to figure most things out by intuition. I input points, record boundaries (via 2d polylines) and then rotated my points to record bearing. Ended up with an output point file that I downloaded to my Leica data collector.
Really cool, I'm pretty impressed with it now that I'm getting immersed into it.
Still got a lot to learn, but in just one night I feel like I can do most boundary type work at this point.
Anyways, as my next attempt will be to do some surface modeling, I thought I would ask the experts here about any tips that would help jumpstart a newbie in the Carlson world.
thanks in advance.
Yes it is an excellent program. If you are going to do a lot 3D modeling (earthworks / mining applications), get AutoCAD as a platform.
Georges, I'm curious as to why you say use ACAD as the platform. Any insight would be appreciated.
thanks,
I have used the Carlson Civil suite with AutoCAD platform since 2006. Recently, I have tried the program on a more powerful machine running with the IntelliCAD platform.
Example of observed differences:
-Bringing large amount of points (1000-1500 pnts) is much faster in AutoCAD.
-Try selecting and deleting 10,000 entities from the screen. Slow.
-The properties of 3D polylines (color and line type) appear to be randomly changing by the program when the drawing is opened again in AutoCAD.
-The viewports get messed up when drawings are re-opened in AutoCAD.
Maybe some the above-mentioned issues are a lack of understanding and training on my behalf on how to properly run the software. Or maybe issues are related to the products being recently released (2012). However, I doubt it.
For boundary surveys and other legal surveying tasks, I am convinced that IntelliCAD is a fine product. However, if you need the program for heavy modeling and 3d work, I believe that you are better of with a stronger platform. The flow of work is less disrupted.
That is my experience.
If you do get stuck, Carlson's help menu is great. Most programs' help section used to be horrible, so people sort of got trained to not even think about it.
Is it worth the extra money for imbedded auto-cad vs intelli-cad, for a strictly boundary/small topo surveying operation? I am also looking at these two products?
I have used the Carlson standalone for over 10 years now. No upgrades needed. I am a one man show, mostly residential and some construction and topo work, not much over 10 acres. Carlson has done everything I've ever asked of it.
Having said that, I was at a CAD Girl seminar last week where they showed the road design stuff...wow. Very impressive, if you are doing that stuff.
You won't be disappointed in Carlson as a standalone.
> Is it worth the extra money for imbedded auto-cad vs intelli-cad, for a strictly boundary/small topo surveying operation? I am also looking at these two products?
When I have the money I will be getting Autocad to use with my Carlson. At my last job I used Carlson with Autocad for years. Now that I only have Carlson with Intellicad I have been pretty disappointed, just don't have the functionality I had become accustomed to. Maybe if I had never used Autocad I wouldn't feel the pain, but you can't put the genie back in the bottle.
We converted ALL of our AutoDesk seats to Carlson Survey with embedded AutoCad a few years ago. We are a purely surveying company and have been WELL PLEASED with the Survey package. It does everything that we neeed and is $4,000 a seat cheaper than the the other choice. There are many things I can do in Carlson that I could not do in LDD. Most processes are faster in Carlson with embedded AutoCad. To be totally homest, when yopu get a topo with about 3,000 points, the software does slow down, but the total time saved still wins out.
In my opinion, Carlson Survey with embedded AutoCad is the ONLY way for a purely surveying outfit to go. It's a simple matter of economics and getting all of the features that you need to do your work.
