So I'm getting into the Carlson Software AND Autocad 2016 at the same time after being in a time warp to 2000 for the last 12 years. HELP! Any tips or links appreciated. I've watched some videos but they all seem to be aimed at the regular user, not a total newbie like me.
andy
I think that cad girl has a LDD to Carlson migration guide
Spend some time learning how annotative text/block/hatch works (available since 2008), it's a little frustrating at first but once you get the hang of it you'll wonder how you ever got along without it. The basic gist is that text, blocks and hatching that are set to annotative re-scale based on the annotation scale setting of the viewport that you are viewing them through. Not only do they re-scale but they can also have independent locations and rotations depending on the scale this makes doing details so much easier. Feel free to hit me up with any questions that you might have.
RRain
Is it a Civil 3D?
If it is C3D, expect to spend roughly 40 hours setting up a comprehensive title block.
Include:
Layout tabs of portrait and landscape versions of every size plot you can make from Letter to Arch-D.
Point labels for every scenario: masked and not masked text, point # only, description only, point # & description etc.
Description key codes
Line tables styles
Curve table styles
Line types (ditch direction, Right of Way, setback, fiber optics etc.)
Custom Layers
Bearing and distance labels (again masked and unmasked I have some with Azimuths or just distance or just bearing)
Parcel labels, contour labels (include some that round to the nearest 10th/ft)
Wipeouts for your boundary corner symbols
Copy and paste every possible disclaimer you might use into all your layout paperspaces along with your legend, vicinity map, north arrow (with every variation ie. Grid, magnetic, plat, deed, project).
YouTube is your best friend. Learn how to create custom point labels and styles first and then you will understand the underlying process and be able to knock out everything else. A good title block is always a work in progress. The hours spent up front will soon be repaid. Nine times out ten, the first thing I do after creating a new drawing from my title block is to draw out the deed. Silly little things like having your title block open with the Deed layer active will save valuable time.
Andy J, post: 437639, member: 44 wrote: So I'm getting into the Carlson Software AND Autocad 2016 at the same time after being in a time warp to 2000 for the last 12 years. HELP! Any tips or links appreciated. I've watched some videos but they all seem to be aimed at the regular user, not a total newbie like me.
andy
If you are a surveyor, just think like a surveyor and Carlson will be very intuitive.
You will love TwistScreen which can rotate your screen image and never changes your coordinates. the first time you open an LDD drawing Carlson will volunteer to fix the Drawing Rotate, say YES and never look back.
Paul in PA
I'll take your "if I'm a surveyor" with a grain of salt... but I see the obvious ghost of LDD all over the Carlson software, so which came first, the chicken or the egg? And for the record, that sounds just like DView Twist in LDD. I see many of the same tools with different names and in slightly different places, but I'm adjusting to the differences. After all, it's just software. They all try to get you to the same end point.
Andy J, post: 438165, member: 44 wrote: I'll take your "if I'm a surveyor" with a grain of salt... but I see the obvious ghost of LDD all over the Carlson software, so which came first, the chicken or the egg? And for the record, that sounds just like DView Twist in LDD. I see many of the same tools with different names and in slightly different places, but I'm adjusting to the differences. After all, it's just software. They all try to get you to the same end point.
The chicken. The chicken came first.
By the way. I went from LDD to Carlson a few years ago. I am glad.
Andy J, post: 438165, member: 44 wrote: I'll take your "if I'm a surveyor" with a grain of salt... but I see the obvious ghost of LDD all over the Carlson software, so which came first, the chicken or the egg? And for the record, that sounds just like DView Twist in LDD. I see many of the same tools with different names and in slightly different places, but I'm adjusting to the differences. After all, it's just software. They all try to get you to the same end point.
The key point was next "think like a surveyor", and Carlson has the command you want.
I do not know when LDD got DView Twist but I was using TwistScreen 25+ years ago with AutoCAD 10 and Carlson SurvCADD. It was a lisp routine using the AutoCAD commands, so it would work in LDD if you had literate friends, but it was not readily known to most LDD users. I believe it was written up in CADence magazine back then.
Paul in PA
All of the functionality of DView Twist and/or TwistScreen have been available in vanilla autocad since at least release 10 (DOS) through the use of the UCS, Plan and SnapAngle commands. 1) Set UCS to required view orientation 2) Set Plan View to the current UCS 3) reset UCS to World 4) Set cross hairs back to vert and horiz using the SnapAngle command (rotate them by the same amount that you rotated the Plan view). This is how I learned to accomplish this task in 1987 and still how I do it today (olsd habits die hard).
RRain
Andy J, post: 437639, member: 44 wrote: So I'm getting into the Carlson Software AND Autocad 2016 at the same time after being in a time warp to 2000 for the last 12 years. HELP! Any tips or links appreciated. I've watched some videos but they all seem to be aimed at the regular user, not a total newbie like me.
andy
I've been using Carlson since about 2004 and have always found it pretty intuitive and easy to use. I worked for one of the major surveying firms as a PM/LS and the firm was using Micro Station for both Survey and Engineering. Me and a few other of the newer guys to firm started pounding the regional Survey Manager to switch the Survey Dept to AutoCAD for various reasons. He finally broke down and assigned me and another guy to test it.
Within a week we both figured out different routines and would share what he had figured out with each other. Within a few months all 8 of us PMs were using it to replace Micro Station.
I currently am the Director of Survey for a medium sized E & S company and am running Carlson 2016. If you do any sort of construction layout you will find it a very valuable and time saving tool for calculating and processing your layout info. The field to finish routine is also extremely valuable on the drafting end but I have not completely set that up yet.
I have found their tech support team to be very knowledgeable and all in the USA speaking clear English.
I would recommend that you speak with Jim Carlson directly, he is very nice and very personable. I purchased 2 seats of 2016 directly through him last year and he told me that somebody had written a book detailing how to use every module in easy to understand steps.
Jim is located in the Mass. office and is very responsive. He generally responds to all calls or emails in a day or 2 even if he is on the road.
AHHH!! Andy has come over to 'the dark Side"!! Best move you have made in a dog's age!! Yes, it is VERY similar to LDD. I amd running Carlson 2016 with embedded AutoCAD. and loving it Loving it so much that I have gone into teaching Carlson and also doing custom configuration and the Field to Finish magic for clients.
Carlson's tech support is awesome, but it is not having someone sitting next to you explaining everything as you are doing it. "Boots on the ground" is always the best way to do things. I'd love to come to your shop, get you all set up and trained, but I really think that would be "cost prohibitive". I am an independent trainer. I do NOT sell software. That way I can show you the software in a more open and honest environment. I do NOT do product demo's. If you can get a group together, I can train at a more reasonable rate. OR should you ever find yourself in the Jackson, MS area, I can "make you such a deal"!!
Until then, I will be glad to give you any help you may need. Send your email address to [email protected] and I will be glad to send you the LDD to Carlson transition guide that was mentioned above. Send me any questions that you may have and I'll see if I can show you how to do things. No charge.
I will make the same offer to ALL members of this site that Use Carlson Survey software. The ultimate goal is to build a trust base that may lead to future one on one, or group training sessions. I'd LOVE to be able to retire from my full time job and do training as my new job.
ALSO, you MUST get That Cad Girl's books. They are awesome and well worth the price. Jennifer's books are VERY easy to follow and answer the questions you will have that no one else addresses. In all honesty, if you get her books and take the time to read them and do the tutorials that come on a thumb drive with the books, your need for my services will be much less. Dammit, but she's GOOD!
Email me and I'll send that file.
Thanks, Cptdent! I may indeed be emailing you and looking into all that you mentioned. Right now, I'm kinda bull in a china shop-ing my way through it.
Andy J, post: 438165, member: 44 wrote: I'll take your "if I'm a surveyor" with a grain of salt... but I see the obvious ghost of LDD all over the Carlson software, so which came first, the chicken or the egg? And for the record, that sounds just like DView Twist in LDD. I see many of the same tools with different names and in slightly different places, but I'm adjusting to the differences. After all, it's just software. They all try to get you to the same end point.
Many of the same commands work in Carlson and if you are running it on ACAD then they nearly all work. I use IntelliCAD and there were some learning curves, but IntelliCAD has some features I like better than ACAD. The right button feature, for example, is better in my opinion and you don't have to search nearly as much.,
Ok, here's a good question.... If I want to migrate drawings from one layer setup to a new one, is there a routine I can set up to automatically change them to the new names/colors/linetypes etc??
Thanks Randy! I surely don't want to go through each one layer by layer!
Andy J, post: 438165, member: 44 wrote: I'll take your "if I'm a surveyor" with a grain of salt... but I see the obvious ghost of LDD all over the Carlson software, so which came first, the chicken or the egg? And for the record, that sounds just like DView Twist in LDD. I see many of the same tools with different names and in slightly different places, but I'm adjusting to the differences. After all, it's just software. They all try to get you to the same end point.
I have said for a long time that LDD was a very surveyor friendly software while the current Civil 3D is a engineer friendly. You can do survey tasks with Civil 3D but it is awkward and not easy.
You are absolutely correct when you say that you see the "ghost" of LDD in Carlson and I think that is by design.
Carlson and Intellicad to a lesser degree are clones of the old LDD.
I've been riding this train since acad 12 with softdesk civil/survey s7, through all of the various incarnations of LDD up to LandDesktop Companion 2009 and then finally in 2014 they pried the last LDD box we had from my trembling, sweaty fingers. Then they threw me in the deep end with C3D. It was literally sink or swim with no one to teach me in our office (at the time I was the only drafter). I came close to quitting on several occasions at first but with the help of you tube and lot's of google searching I managed to persevere and now you couldn't make me go back to LDD with a great big stick. I can tell you for a fact that the blood of SoftDesk/LDD runs deep in the veins of Civil 3D, so much so that it is frustrating at times because some of the greatest shortcomings of C3D are inherited from those parents. I am no C3D evangelist, it has a ton of room for improvement, especially for surveyors; however, to say it doesn't work like LDD just isn't true. Description Keys, Figure Prefixes, .FBK field book format, command line entry of traverse data with batch file edit functionality...etc. It's all there, tucked away in it's own little forgotten and overlooked niche.
RRain