For those of you who use Carlson, do you have any issues with deliverable to clients that use Civil 3D?
For those of you who use Civil 3D, do you have any problems working with drawings from Carlson Survey?
Thanks in advance,
Jimmy
Our engineering department uses civil 3d and survey department uses Autocad with Carlson overlays. ... I have to create XML files to send along with the drawings...c3d seems to have issues with Carlson points, contours, and other objects.
Eric Williams, PLS
MS/AL
We are wondering the same thing. We are still using Land Desktop and it works just fine for everything we do especially point management.
We are trying to decide whether to start using Carlson or Civil 3D moving forward. Many of our clients are using Civil 3D and have gently been nudging us to move to it as well. From what I gather from others on this site, the move to Civil 3D has a steep learning curve but will be worth it in the end.
I have not yet used Carlson but have always heard good things about it and the transition is much smoother.
Ultimately though I'm sure my clients would prefer being delivered a product that is the most compatible with their own.
Looking forward to what others have to say about the compatibility.
In our office we also run Civil3D and Carlson loaded on top of AutoCAD and a few Carlson Survey Stand - alone packages. Everything is downloaded to a central server. I have been with this particular firm for about a year, and to date there has not been ONE problem with any drawings opening and everything working as it should.
Prior to this job I used Carlson Survey OEM in the office (since 2008) and NEVER had anyone say they had a problem with our drawing files. Corps projects, major surveys for a Top 500 Engineering firms and even a scattering of architects.
Maybe I am lucky or have everything set up right, BUT what I have seen since 2008 is TOTAL drawing compatibility with Autodesk products. OR maybe my clients know how to do any necessary conversions as a matter of routine?
Large companies receive drawing files prepared on all sorts of graphics packages and they are usually used to any necessary conversions and have a system in place to handle it.
I've never had to make a XML file (don't know that I really know how to do one). Never had one requested because of compatibility issues.
There shouldn't be any issue going from a Carlson generated drawing to Civil3D. Since Carlson uses standard Autocad entities for all of it's drafting. You can make it easier on Civil3D users by exporting centerlines, profiles and surfaces as xml, but if you have all of your linework done right, Civil3D will be able to recreate the data very easily. Going from Civil3D to plain Autocad over Carlson or Intellicad, I would export the surfaces to an xml and use the export to autocad feature to change the feature lines and other Civil3D objects to standard Autocad entities. I run Carlson over Civil3D and do all of my work in Carlson. I like some of the functions of Civil3D, but it has it's challenges.
