After using Autocad with Softdesk for many years, I transitioned to Carlson Civil/Survey software with Intellicad in 2007 and use SurvCE on my data collector. Carlson support has always been very responsive with any questions or problems I encountered over the years. Carlson has worked pretty well for me.
Over the last couple of years I have had to work closely with consultants on large civil projects using Civil3D_2013 and 2014. With my recent experience with Civil3D, it is not very "surveyor friendly". Carlson has really shined when I have had to do things that Civil3D falls short on.
With that as the background, last week I emailed Carlson Support with a couple of suggestions to make their software better, things that would help me, and probably a lot of other surveyors. Not expecting any thing come out of my suggestions, I was pleasantly surprised when I received a call from one of the Carlson support/programmer people. The person spent about 30 minutes with me getting more detail about my suggestions.
My suggestions included:
1) Make Carlson able to run on Briscad Ver14 (64bit). Absolutely fantastic fast DWG compatible Autocad alternative, it's capability is way ahead of Intellicad. Carlson wasn't to open to it, but if enough people request it, maybe it would happen. Carlson did say Intellicad's next version will be 64 bit. That would be very good.
2) Work with Terry Dotson at Dotsoft to make his ToolPak, Mapworks, Word2Cad and XLtoCad work in Intellicad. It works with Autocad and Briscad, but not Intellicad. If you haven't used ToolPak, you are missing a lot of very valuable routines. His stuff is some of the best productivity software written, I used it through Autocad_2004, but when I switched to Intellicad I couldn't use it anylonger. Missed it ever since. When I saw it ran on Briscad I upgraded my license, and now run parallel Intellicad/Carlson and Briscad/Dotsoft. Works pretty well. Carlson said they are very aware of Dotsoft and want to work with him to make it compatible with Intellicad.
So Carlson blew me away, they listened. I was impressed.
If Briscad's fees for tying it to Carlson were the same as Intellicad's, then I am sure Carlson would offer the package that you desire. The Intellicad option came about only when AutoDesk deceided to act the a$$ with Carlson. All of this is simply a matter of economics and Carlson wanting to offer a quality product without emptying you bank account (something that does not bother AutoDesk at all!).
AutoDesk Pricing
"...does not bother AutoDesk at all!"
Nope, it sure doesn't seem to. Carlson is gaining a big foothold on the market because of AutoDesk's obscene prices.
Dave
What blew me away was the fact that if you come up with good ideas, they will implement them if feasible.
If you find problems with the routines, they will usually work with you immediately and find the root cause and provide a patch to get you by until they include the fix as an update.
I believe much of their success could be attributed to the caliber of employees they hire.
We were having some problems with a few things in Carlson Field. They sent a programmer from the Mayesville, KY office to our Jackson, MS office to see what the problems were and he wrote fixes on the spot. It cost us nothing. Now THAT is customer service.
> We were having some problems with a few things in Carlson Field. They sent a programmer from the Mayesville, KY office to our Jackson, MS office to see what the problems were and he wrote fixes on the spot. It cost us nothing. Now THAT is customer service.
I used to be one of those "firefighters" back in the day. Not for Carlson. My boss would come to me and say I needed to be on a flight to "such and such" in a couple hours. Thank goodness I had an unlimited corporate card at the time and single with no pets. Usually I was able to solve the problem like you had. I had full access to all the source code including the operating system. Never the less they were all impressed with our response. My money was never good during those trips.
Lord only knows how much money that company dumped out sending me out on those "missions". Sometimes those other programmers were my buddies and could call them at home with no problem.
Me and my two buddies (still buddies) had our little group known as "Professional Services" and our motto was "2nd to none" and we stood by that.
>
> 2) Work with Terry Dotson at Dotsoft to make his ToolPak, Mapworks, Word2Cad and XLtoCad work in Intellicad. It works with Autocad and Briscad, but not Intellicad. If you haven't used ToolPak, you are missing a lot of very valuable routines. His stuff is some of the best productivity software written, I used it through Autocad_2004, but when I switched to Intellicad I couldn't use it anylonger. Missed it ever since. When I saw it ran on Briscad I upgraded my license, and now run parallel Intellicad/Carlson and Briscad/Dotsoft. Works pretty well. Carlson said they are very aware of Dotsoft and want to work with him to make it compatible with Intellicad.
>
> So Carlson blew me away, they listened. I was impressed.
I believe both Terry Dotson and RK McSwain both used to work for Carlson.
I have been using Carlson since 96. Awesome customer support.
Josh 4
Good information. I'm glad to hear more stories about their great customer support.
It's just nice to work with a company that takes of it's customers.
I've suggested a couple of things to Carlson in the past and they eventually implemented them to my pleasant surprise. Carlson is for me, the best software company for a surveyor.
AutoDesk Pricing
> ... Carlson is gaining a big foothold on the market because of AutoDesk's obscene prices.
We shouldn't lose sight of the fact that Autodesk retains control over Carlson's pricing of it's OEC products. Anytime Autodesk feels Carlson is grabbing too much market share, it just jacks up the cost of licensing its engine.
The antidote for that is a stable alternative. When I tested the Intellicad version of Carlson 2012 I didn't think it was there, yet. Maybe in a couple of years.... maybe with a 64 bit version...I'm rooting for Intellicad, if only just to restrain Autodesk.
Carlson wants the surveyor's business, AutoDesk only wants your money and to Hades with the rest of it. There's the differance between the two companies.
