Our subscription is up for Civil 3D shortly.?ÿ Has anyone on this forum recently made the transition from Civil 3D to the Carlson software??ÿ If so, how difficult was it to transition and how long did it take to become productive?
Any issues with converting old dwg filed created with Civil 3D, LDD or ACAD files?
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I suspect long term it would be beneficial, but I don't want to impact our current delivery schedule.?ÿ?ÿ
Thanks for any insights!
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LAS
I switched from LDD maybe ten+ years ago. ?ÿJump in! ?ÿBefore you know it, these fears will be in your rear view mirror.
In 2011 I entered the Carlson world after years of Softdesk/LDD.?ÿ The transition was pretty smooth, for me. After 15 months of that I went back to LDD, and later to C3d. At my current job we have both - I use mostly C3d. I must say that the 2022 IntelliCAD based product is a world better than the 2011 IntelliCAD was.?ÿ
If you have LDD experience?ÿ you will have little problem making a jump to Carlson. If you have only C3d experience I'd expect the transition will be somewhat more difficult. The reason being?ÿ -there a number of associated files to be managed with Carlson. Coordinate data base file, surface file, F2f file, etc., etc. Users of LDD will be comfortable with that. C3d users are accustomed to having everything in the dwg.?ÿ?ÿ
I've been transitioning from C3D 2017 to Carlson Survey OEM 2022 over the past few months. I have monitors from 2 different computers on my desk with each having different software on them so I can use C3D for preexisting projects and Carlson for everything new.
The transition has been pretty easy with the help of this forum and Google. You'll easily be able to find the Carlson equivalent to most of the C3D commands that you're used to. I'm now good to go and fairly efficient doing boundary maps with Carlson. I have not done much with surfaces or cross sections though.
Each program does have it's advantages but nothing has been a deal breaker yet. I like how C3D automatically updates line labels and surfaces when you make changes but I think Carlson runs a little faster and there aren't nearly as many layers without all of the C3D survey styles.
Converting from C3D to Carlson isn't too bad but I haven't found a great way to bring old drawings directly into Carlson without using C3D first. I usually have to open the dwg with C3D and the export the points to a csv. Then I export the drawing to an "AEC Objects exploded" format. There may be a better way but I haven't found it yet.
Good luck and let us know if you have specific questions because someone here knows exactly how to do whatever you're trying to do.
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Gregg?ÿ
@gmpls?ÿ
I'm not sure what difficulty you're having bringing a C3D dwg into Carlson.?ÿ I usually just rename it, open in Carlson, do Points/Convert Point Format/Convert LDT/Civil 3D to Carlson Points.
It creates Carlson points, but at Real Z.?ÿ So I usually draw the points in again at 0
@jph Oh, ok. It sounds like that will eliminate creating the csv but what about line annotations and contour lines? Do they show up as text or lines in the drawing or are they unknown entities?
@gmpls?ÿ
I'm sure some of the special C3D stuff will be lost.?ÿ Lines come in as lines and polylines.?ÿ Contours will come in and can be exploded to 3D polylines.
It's not a perfect method, but you can get 90-95% of what you need
@gmpls Use the c3d_all command in Carlson, it will convert points, profiles, surfaces, alignments etc to carlson format for you without having to go into C3D and export.
What is this command?!!?ÿ I've never heard of it, but now I can't wait to try it.?ÿ Thanks
Try using ??Drawing cleanup? under the file pulldown. Many of your issues will be resolved using this. You can check/uncheck a bunch of options.?ÿ
@jim-oneil That works to convert C3D contours to polylines, but using the c3d_tin by itself will convert C3D surfaces to Carlson tin files (full top surface data versus contour polylines).?ÿ c3d_all will run through all of the convertable c3d objects and create the appropriate Carlson files for them.
so I'm digging this up again -
has anybody ever tested this to see if the civil 3d specific items such as feature lines, alignments, corridors, surfaces, pipe networks and other C3D specific entities will transfer to Carlson? A lot of my land development projects have all of these items created by C3D which I'm trying to determine if they'll share and work appropriately between both projects.
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I had a guy once running carlson tell me that he was able to view my pipe networks but I wasn't entirely sure if Carlson was able to utilize the items the same essentially or if it was just lines and blocks as he never specified and this was more for staking