Migration from LD2005 to Civil 3D 2015

Dennis,

Welcome. I hope you'll enjoy this forum as much as I do.

For help with Civil 3D, here's two places that I frequent.

The Civil 3D Forum. A great place to get answers:
http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/autocad-civil-3d-general/bd-p/66

The Civil 3D Tutorials in the Help Section:
http://help.autodesk.com/view/CIV3D/2015/ENU/?guid=GUID-B6CF98F9-FF6F-4FF5-8022-60EB21A611A7

It'll take you a while to work through the tutorials, but they're free and you can pick up most of what you need to get up and running.

Dave

Can you ask for early retirement? Or ride LD2005 until such date?

Your story reminds me of a Utah farmer beamed to the streets of Manila. Major migration. Good luck, God speed.

C3D handles points differently than LDD. Most the other stuff is there, but its in a different place. Once I retrained my brain, I kinda like it. Hit the Tutorials and they will help. Maybe take a couple of courses that helped me anyway.

The learning curve from LD2005 to C3D2015 resembles a profile view of the Alps. After 2013 EVERYTHING pretty much changed. It's an entirely new thought process. True, it's a "one time set-up" thing, but getting there is a little rough and then, as you go along, you have to go back and set stuff you missed the first time. (See if someone in the office has a 10 year old that can do it for you. They can set up your cell phone too while they are at it.)
IF LD 2005 gave you everything that you needed to do your job, then I would have looked at the Carlson Survey OEM package. Very similar to what you are used to and a MUCH shallower learning curve.
Maybe it's not too late to make that change. If it is, I would suggest finding a training center that offers classroom training. Harry Ward has such a place in Front Royal, Virginia. You can get the basics down pat in a week long course there. Get the basics and then go back to the office and expand everything from that point on.
Some people can get third party books and use the "Help" files and figure it all out. I am not one of them. It's usually after someone shows me how to do something that those books finally make sense. The days of self-instruction are numbered.

> Can any of you point me in a direction where I can make .. things like "Label North and East" ....?
Google and youtube are your friends here. Google "C3d label northing and easting" and get your answer. Will work for almost any question you may have.

Thank you for all of your responses. I can see that it will not be an easy task but I'll just need to dig in and figure it out. I was not expecting it to be so entirely different 🙁

I feel your pain. I transitioned from Carlson civil suite. There was no learning curve. It was a wall. Simple things like label Northing and Easting as you say. Forget about it. I found a .lsp file that I modified ad works fine now. Plotting deeds? Good bye "plot deed descriptions" etc, etc.

SVL,

"There was no learning curve. It was a wall."

Dave

Civil 3D is quite powerful and once setup it works really nice. However, unless you have a stellar CAD manager or a patient talented CAD tech, you are not going to be able to take full advantage of the software. Overall, to do the basic survey functions we all need, you have to be able to create the "label styles" for everything.
These styles should be stored in a template in order to be available when needed.

It is not a survey software- it is pure and simple a Civil software that will allow an engineer to label a bearing. Yes you can draw a plat with it...but you can do that in vanilla Autocad. Common cogo commands need to be added to become a true Survey solution.

The traverse adjustment routines are a holdover from LDD and Softdesk. In my opinion, given the price of the software and the age we live in there is no excuse not to have a comprehensive Least Squares program. Autodesk will tell you that Surveyors will use their own adjustment software....but they neglect to tell the engineers they need to spend more money on survey software.

Bottom line...it is a powerful tool that can do the job, but is missing some of the common time saving survey routines that we have become accustomed to since the HP41 and Dos Cogo days.

Styles, styles, styles... civil 3d works pretty well as a survey program if there is time spent on setting it up properly. Some features I miss from the days of LDT but the gains far surpass them.

First things first, are you setting a template up in house or outsourcing it? If in house you need to look into point styles, point label style, note styles etc. For instance labeling northing/easting you can set up a note style for it, by picking anywhere it'll place the note, if you move or copy said note the change is automatic.

As a surveyor you'll want to look into the description codes, you can use those to automatically assign point styles, default label styles, layers and scale for points you bring in. The line work will be similarly set up as figure styles.

This software is totally style driven. You'll want styles set for everything, surfaces, alignments, point labels, points (what LDT would previously insert as a block is now the actual point) etc. A template is key so that when you start new jobs it already has the styles in which you want.

The use of styles is fairly straight forward, when you build your surfaces you'll want to have styles set up for showing the tin/points (surface points, not necessarily cogo points). When you have it built you can change the style to shown 2/10 contours or switch to 1/5 contours on the fly etc. The same goes for points, pick the point, go to your properties and you can change the way it looks and is labeled just by changing the style that is assigned.

Start with the tutorial files built into the program, I also recommend picking up Mastering AutoCAD Civil 3D 2015: Autodesk Official Press, pretty in depth and easy to follow.

The task may seem daunting at the moment but once you start getting the hang of it, you'll be surprised at how useful the software can be. I'm in the process of converting the other two techs and head surveyor in my department to it from Terramodel... which is quite the change to them.

I am in the process of upgrading from XP and LDD 2008 to Civil 3D and 2015 Carlson Survey. I have subscriptions to 2015 vanilla Autocad and the 2015 suite that contains Civil 3D, map and other programs. The subscriptions allow me to continue to use the older version so I am not shut down until I can learn the new software, not easy for an old timer. The install will be on a new computer with Windows 7 pro.

I was told that I could install Carlson survey over both autocad and the included IntelliCad 8.0 on the same computer, so my question is, would it be better to install over Civil 3D, vanilla autocad or the LDD 2008? I have also purchased Carlson GIS if that makes a difference.

I know of one company, architecture/engineering/surveying, that sent over 10 people to training before adopting Civil 3D. That group then invested 8 - 10 hours a week per person for over two months setting up templates matching their existing CAD standards. The other employees were then trained using the custom template files before software was installed on their computers.

Thanks for the encouragement, I have spent the day reading and watching Youtube videos.

We are also adding scanning so if I ever figure out Civil 3D I will then be figuring out the Leica plugin Multiworx:excruciating:

When I hit the wall my company went to THESE guys.

Took a class, bought the designer and surveyors companion as well as the Pinnacle package. The Pinnacle videos and the phone support are worth their weight in gold to us. The class was a real nice boost.

Like someone said: "Styles Styles Styles and develop a naming convention for them."

I still use Carlson for most of my boundary work, but C3D is an awesome beast when it comes to moving earth. I love it for that-finally.

Steve

Lots of info out there. Google "Land Desktop to Civil 3D". Read and read. Like everyone is saying "Styles!!!!" Here is a paper to read "LDT to C3D"

Hi Dennis,

The best advice given so far is to hire out your template development. The reseller that sold your company the seats of civil will have a resource whom they can call upon, and develop your company template.

Now, while you have a consultant writing the template, another consultant would be used to come in and setup your survey office with civil. Way beyond "styles styles styles," you'll want to retool the way the crew picks up data, how you download and import the raw data, and probably even change quite a bit of the "that's the way we've always done it."

If your not willing to adjust the way you do "business" with respect to surveying, you are in for a wicked long, hard road.

You have just been given a Lamborghini. You can't operate it like a beat up Chevy.

With a modest investment in updating your Field codes, line work collection methods, and traverse procedures, you will be fine. Let the engineers figure out the styles, because as they update the template to develop the plans that "look" like the old plans, your survey data will lay right in nicely no matter what template they start with.

If you need to be producing recordable boundary plans immediately, you need to run both systems. It'll take a month before you are getting comfy with preparing plats. But existing conditions topo plans, you'll be able to rip one of those out in a couple days.

Survey figures are tough, admittedly. I know many an office that nuke those things into 3D poly lines, and even a couple operators that continue the decimation to 2D poly lines. That's ok. You can't "do" anything with figures, although they make fantastic Breaklines if surepveyed correctly. But that's the beauty of Civil: dump your survey points/figures into one drawing to develop the surface, then reference that surface into the rest if the "deliverable" plans. Then you can dump your figures into a deliverable plan, nuke them, and go on drafting like you did on release 10 back in 1987.

Surveying with civil 3D is a challenge the first year. After 12-18 months, (and if you gave it a fair shake,) you'll wonder why you didn't switch back on civil 2010. (Prior to 2010 the early adopters were still working out the kinks.)

Myself, I would not rely on a consultant. I'd try to figure it out with the amount of information available on line. There should be a fair amount of free templates available out there, here for example, I'd download, play with them and learn that way.

Reasoning is not so much about the consultant's invoice, I like the autodidact route, even if can more bumpy and may take more time. Consultant are sometimes like hair dressers, you tell them something but they pretty much do what they feel is best anyway. I do not like that.

Survey figures, I got mix feelings about those. Worked on a building layout this year, one of these new designs with fancy & curvy foundations. The contractor had to tone it down. From a constructibility stand point, the survey figures did not work very well.

Anyway, learn the software by yourself with pointers by others, you will get it. It is good to keep the brain active.

I want to thank all of you for your responses, this is a great group and I hope to become an active member.

What I have done:

- Watched a bunch of Youtube videos.

- Bought the book "Autocad Civil 3D Essentials"

- Connected with associates who have been working with C3D.

- Downloaded some available templates to look at.

I am able to run C3D and continue to use LD2005 side by side while I learn and still produce. It will be a challenge but I need to get it worked out.

I guess after all of these years with Land Desktop it is just second nature for me, I hardly think, the mouse just goes where it has gone for years. Now I need to retrain the mouse 😀

Thanks again for all of your helpful responses, very much appreciated by an old surveyor in the twilight of a mediocre career.

Welcome aboard. Keep posting your questions and progress. You will get different fish to bite depending on time of day or day of week. Who knows, maybe you could become our very own LDD to C3D transition guru. You are not the first and won't be the last to make the transition. Me, myself, I went from LDD to Carlson and avoided C3D altogether.

:gammon: