Bow Tie Surveyor, post: 406836, member: 6939 wrote: Seems nobody is concerned that surfaces generated by a Civil3D workflow come from what appears to be unadjusted (I.e. open, non-redundant) observations.
Huh? Are you doubling all your topo shots?
C3d will make a surface out of whatever points you give it, just as Carlson will.
Mark Mayer, post: 406877, member: 424 wrote: Huh? Are you doubling all your topo shots?
C3d will make a surface out of whatever points you give it, just as Carlson will.
I was referring to the multiple responses from people stating that they are not adjusting their observations (I'm assuming that would include the project control) because in Civil3D it is either too difficult or the adjustment routine doesn't work.
Mark Mayer, post: 406255, member: 424 wrote: I would word that "You give a consistent- and consistently good- product to engineers and they will put up with file conversion hassles." Until they find someone who will give them good service, product, and a file format which doesn't require conversion.
That's not going to happen until Autodesk takes over the ENTIRE CAD field. The government is hell-bent on Microstation for example. Many engineers do government work, so converting files is a daily routine. The companies I have worked for have conversion routines established for several 3rd party products and when files come in they are converted right off. This DOES NOT seem to be an issue with the larger firms I have worked for or with. Neel-Schaffer is one of the bigger firms I worked for and this was a TOTAL non-issue for them.
cptdent, post: 406935, member: 527 wrote: ....Many engineers do government work, so converting files is a daily routine....
If I have a client feeding me a steady stream of work I'm going to try to deliver in that clients preferred format, whether they make it an absolute requirement or not. To do otherwise is to say to your client, "Here is my product. It's good enough. Take it or leave it." What kind of customer service is that?
Clients rarely tell you what your shortcomings are. They just deal with them until someone comes along with fewer shortcomings.
Mark Mayer, post: 406937, member: 424 wrote: If I have a client feeding me a steady stream of work I'm going to try to deliver in that clients preferred format, whether they make it an absolute requirement or not. To do otherwise is to say to your client, "Here is my product. It's good enough. Take it or leave it." What kind of customer service is that?
Clients rarely tell you what your shortcomings are. They just deal with them until someone comes along with fewer shortcomings.
I agree, we should embrace opportunities to work with our clients or potential clients, deliver our product with their interest in mind and leave software competition to the software companies.
Bow Tie Surveyor, post: 406836, member: 6939 wrote: Seems nobody is concerned that surfaces generated by a Civil3D workflow come from what appears to be unadjusted (I.e. open, non-redundant) observations.
Your lumping together 2 different processes.
I have used Civil3D and it is great for topo work. I guess it really depends on your style of work. My work is 85% boundary. It takes longer to adjust and calculate a boundary using Civil3D. You need to use other software for effective adjustments. In C3D boundary analysis is done by using workarounds. Ex. drawing lines with osnaps and dimensioning them for simple things like an inverse or running a plat closure with area, all require workarounds. All this requires extra time and takes away from the final product. I do not think Land Surveyors are the market segment that Autodesk is going after. Why would I spend the long dollar for C3D, when I know that none of the upgrades to the software I want and need will ever be added. A lot of these features were in Land Desktop and got stuffed in the closet. Carlson does what I need as a surveyor. Yeah, the surface will need some manual rebuilds, and that extra time I will sacrifice for the 15% of topo work that I do. Meat and potatoes boundary work, I'm going with Bruce and Jim.
Mark Mayer, post: 406937, member: 424 wrote: If I have a client feeding me a steady stream of work I'm going to try to deliver in that clients preferred format, whether they make it an absolute requirement or not. To do otherwise is to say to your client, "Here is my product. It's good enough. Take it or leave it." What kind of customer service is that?
Clients rarely tell you what your shortcomings are. They just deal with them until someone comes along with fewer shortcomings.
You're right. But repeat clients understand what they're getting, and know how to use what I give them. First-time clients may complain, but I know that their arguments are mostly their own ignorance and arrogance. I'll work with them, but if they stubbornly cling to a belief that's more their own misunderstanding or imagination than reality, then at this point in my life, I don't need them.
I completely agree with Mark and was wondering why Autodesk people wouldn't hear out what land surveyors say and wouldn't leave LDD as a part of the Civil 3D software (as it was back in 2009) or at least add all stuff that was in LDD versus loosing potential customers to Carlson.
Nonsense!
I was fluent in Eagle Point, but we don't have it anymore. I miss it. I've barely begun to explore C3D and so far, it makes my head hurt. 😉
Mike Marks, post: 406680, member: 1108 wrote: The problem I have with ACAD is they've absorbed and killed competitors (VANGO, CAiCE, et. al.) and kept a lock on interchange standards to stifle competition since the '80s. Their first XML release transfer sucked. ACAD is a bad business partner to join, and I hate how the government agencies have mandated their formats to work for them only. Also, they convince you you've got to spend $5,000 per seat and more bucks for the subscription. Land surveying just ain't that complicated; control, boundary, topo and stakeout is all we do.
"... and I hate how the government agencies have mandated their formats to work for them only." It's not restricted to AutoDesk, is it?
Don't most DOT's mandate MicroStation?
Bow Tie Surveyor, post: 406836, member: 6939 wrote: Seems nobody is concerned that surfaces generated by a Civil3D workflow come from what appears to be unadjusted (I.e. open, non-redundant) observations.
?? Do you traverse through your topo shots and adjust them?
Jim in AZ, post: 407530, member: 249 wrote: ?? Do you traverse through your topo shots and adjust them?
No, I don't traverse through the topo shots, but the control that topo observations are made from should be analyzed and adjusted (preferably by least squares). From what I have read here, it is difficult if not impossible to analyze and adjust your survey control with Civil3D.
Also, its good practice to run at least a 1D least squares analysis on your topo observations using your TBM ties for redundancy, so you are not relying solely on the measure up at your occupied point. I know with the Florida Department of Transportation this is standard operating procedure. With FDOT, there is not a single raw observation file that is not subjected to a least squares analysis.
Bow Tie Surveyor, post: 407617, member: 6939 wrote: From what I have read here, it is difficult if not impossible to analyze and adjust your survey control with Civil3D.
That is why I said way back at the beginning that C3d is not survey software.
Mark Mayer, post: 407620, member: 424 wrote: That is why I said way back at the beginning that C3d is not survey software.
It's definitely not the complete package for survyeyors....but what is? Civil3d does everything I need it to do and it does it exceptionally well IMO. Ok, it doesn't adjust traverses very well, but honestly we only run a handful of traverses a year so it's not that big of a deal. Most every surveyor I know uses StarNet for this. As with any competent professional, they use a variety of software and equipement to produce the correct client driven deliverable.
WA-ID Surveyor, post: 407634, member: 6294 wrote: It's definitely not the complete package for surveyors....but what is? .... Most every surveyor I know uses StarNet for this.
Carlson includes a least squares adjustment package - SurvNet - that comes close to being as good as StarNet. If you have Carlson you don't really need a lot of other things. Which is Bowtie's point, I presume.
Not sure if videos like these on youtube explain more about Civil 3D's (recent, hidden) survey capability:
[MEDIA=youtube]Ca-Xwz7mvms[/MEDIA]
There's also a Trimble add-on:
http://www.trimble.com/support_trl.aspx?Nav=Collection-27101&pt=Trimble%20Link%20Support
I guess anyone could make good points either way. We have used Carlson for just about as long as they have been in business, and I have had Softdesk, LDD, Civil 3D, and I personally have never ever found any other those to even come close to Carlson for what we do. However, we do surveying and civil, and about the only place we send our files to others would be architects, and we have never had a problem with them interpreting Carlson, or Intellicad.
I tried Intellicad a few years ago, and it wasn't stable enough for me. But this version 8.2 is like a HUGE leap forward. I really have no tolerance for bad firmware or software, and lodge some serious complaints against that kind of BS. But I honestly can't find a thing wrong with Intellicad and Carlson interfacing.
If I could say anything negative about Carlson, it would be that their special leaders and leaders have terribly inconsistent ways to set arrow and text size. For some reason they keep advancing the advancements and leaving behind the little stuff that would make it slicker. That said though, they are in my opinion leagues better than Civil 3D (for us). They are not arrogant, annual support charge is reasonable, and you can always get your questions answered on the phone with them almost real time every time.
Reason for my little thread was to say that I personally was very pleased with latest version of intellicad/carlson. Who, knows, things could change! 😉
Jim in AZ, post: 407529, member: 249 wrote: "... and I hate how the government agencies have mandated their formats to work for them only." It's not restricted to AutoDesk, is it?
Don't most DOT's mandate MicroStation?
Yes, but for convoluted reasons. The big DOT's bought in to the early Intergraph $150,000 console hardware/software solution in the early eighties, a good thing compared to punchcards. With the quick transition to Bentley-Microstation due to the new software only Windows based architecture (no more $8,000 Tektronix graphics terminals), the DOTs doubled down on Microstation partly because they had input to customizing the software to suit their arcane needs.
Inroads was usable highway engineering software, but somehow (graft, paybacks, who knows) many DOTs got popped by massive lowball bids for civil software, namely CAiCE ($200 a seat if you buy 2000), who at the time was literally operating out of a garage in Florida. That stuff sucked, endless weekly bugfixes, and turned into the biggest software boondoggle I've witnessed. As a user, the skillset was keeping up with the workarounds and somehow getting your job done in spite of blue screens of death. The killer was ACAD buying out CAiCE and killing it, as they had done to Generic CaDD, etc. So the DOTs, left with millions in investment on uSTN, doubled down again. Things were stable for a decade or so, until ACAD gained total dominance in all things engineering as it is now.
Today even the DOTs are admitting defeat:
Nuff' said. Imagine it taking ten years to abandon dead software.
