> I was running 2006 until I found a deal on 2014. Not impressed yet..
If you are talking C3d and use the field to finish capability I think you will find that it has been significantly improved.
I get cold shivers every time I think of Terramodel. Horrible, horrible software.
Depends on what you have installed.
I will admit, it is getting dated now but with these guys ( http://www.geocomp.com.au/ and their additional commands ( http://www.geocomp.com.au/support/terramodel/tmllist.htm ) it performs light years ahead of the stand alone program.
It is a dying thing though with Trimble not doing any more with it. There is only so many add ons that can be done before the entire back end needs re inventing.
What specific issues do you see when opening/using Carlson Intellicad drawings in AutoCAD. I would like to know any issues our clients may be having that we don't know about.
I am finally getting Carson Survey Intellicad 2011 to do close to what I could do in AutoCAD. It has taken some time but I am now getting as productive as I like to be with my Cad.
Jonathan, get the books on Carlson from Cadapult.com and the training manuals that Jennifer DeBona puts out at thatcadgirl.com and you will have your software doing more than you ever did before.
There are tons of tools that are kinda hidden in the pull downs. There are things under the EDIT pulldown for TEXT that you won't believe.
Jennifer's book on configuring Carlson software is a really BIG help. Once you have all of that setup as she outlines you will notice a big difference.
Remember, any software package is only as good as the tools that you know how to use.
Sending stuff to other people is generally fine unless you have to send C3D deliverables such as alignments, TINs, etc. Sure it can all be imported into C3D from Carlson but some clients don't want to do that. We use a mix of Carlson on top of AutoCAD and C3D.
The bigger issues we ran into was getting stuff from clients that was done in various AutoDesk Suites. Contours and other objects (especially from architects and ME people) would come in as proxy objects that would only display as boxes. Even when we had the enablers we could not get these things to even show up or save back using TrueView.
Also I think if you do a lot of work with images, scanned maps, and PDFs, AutoCAD is far superior to IntelliCAD.
I will say this though...when I got Carlson with IntelliCAD I was doing mostly small residential work. We now do almost none of that. IntelliCAD worked fine for that type of work.
Point A to Point B
Both "tools" will get you from here to there...
I went from AutoCAD MAP 2006 w/ CARLSON to C3D 2014 w/CARLSON.
The deal was 50% off earlier this year. (Well, it was buy one, trade in two and get one for free.)
CARLSON and I kinda skip all the C3D stuff. I do need to invest some time learning it (though I have created surfaces for an engineer without too much pain)
Must give those books a look. As I said I am getting as productive in Intellicad as AutoCAD but initially I struggled with the lack of things like Entity Tracking (now available in newer Intellicad versions), Lisp routines not working, Printing not working properly, hatching not working properly, autoregen not working.....
I agree with you that AutoCAD is a better choice for ping-pong sessions with engineer.
However, I receive C3D drawings often and do not see much issues. There are a couple of new commands tha you can run to migrate the proprietary data from one software to the other. No boxes.
The thing is, C3D isn't that great for surveying and mining. We all know it. So, can't blame a guy for wanting to use what works best for its workload.
And clients, if they are good clients, they ought to understand that too. "I can give you what you need, but don't dictate the choice of my tools." Good relationships allow that.
Damn right! I can do 99.9999999999% (enough SF?) of my work w/CAD R14 & Softdesk on Windows XP?! Why in the he!l do I have to change? We humans must be the dumbest SOB's on the planet?! We keep changing stuff that has no business changing...ugh...if I had any hair left I'd pull it out...
