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In This Issue
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That CAD Girl Online Store
Open For Business |
| Finally! We're Now On Facebook |
| Carlson 2012 Has Been Released |
End Of Year Workshops
Coming to Statesville, Asheville, Wilmington & Raleigh NC |
National CAD Standards
Why don't civil engineers & surveyors use it? |
| Links to AutoCAD®, IntelliCAD® & Carlson® Articles & Webinars |
Land Desktop Tip
How to work with Land Desktop's Drawing Orientation Feature |
You Are Wasting Your Money On Civil 3d
Believe it or not - I Didn't Write That! |
Carlson Software Tip
Best Fit Profile |
Totally Random Tip of the Day
Boost Your Wi-Fi Signal Using Only a Beer Can |
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| That CAD Girl Online Store |
I've timed the "Grand Opening" of our Online Store to coincide with the release of Carlson's 2012 products.
Please note that pricing in the Online Store reflects Carlson's Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) but additional discounts can be found by calling us at 919.417.8351 to request a coupon code.
Please see our Carlson Pricing Page to learn about Carlson's pricing structure with regard to upgrades and annual maintenance. |
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| Finally! We're Now On Facebook |
Or maybe I should say, "We're now on Facebook... again"! Kudos to those few people who stumbled onto the Facebook account I played around with and forgot to delete months ago, but a new That CAD Girl Facebook page has now been launched.
I plan to use Facebook as the primary method of keeping everyone up to date on the latest events & training classes and news about Carlson and Autodesk software releases. Hope to see you there! |
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| Carlson 2012 Has Been Released |
Carlson Software released the 2012 version of their desktop software products on Monday, September 12th. A complete list of Improvements in 2012 can be found here. The newest version can be downloaded here and current customers who are eligible for automatic upgrade to 2012 will also find a 2012 serial number generator on the same page.
Products released today include Civil Suite, Survey, Civil, Hydrology, GIS, Point Cloud, Construction and Takeoff among others. Only the products for installation with IntelliCAD or on top of your AutoCAD have been released at this time. The versions of Survey and Takeoff with embedded AutoCAD will be released in the next several weeks.
After so many years keeping their prices the same, you will notice that Carlson has slightly increased the prices of Civil Suite, Survey, Civil, Hydrology & GIS. In my opinion and even with the price increase, Carlson continues to offer the most bang for the buck when compared to other civil/survey/construction packages on the market today.
To find out about purchasing or upgrading, you can visit our new Online Store or our Carlson Pricing & Upgrades page. Or, feel free to call 919.417.8351 or Email Us with questions. |
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| End Of Year Workshops |
Our end of year workshops have now been scheduled and we can announce that we will be in Statesville, Asheville, Wilmington & Raleigh NC this year. Because of the ice storms that decided to arrive on the day of our Statesville workshop(s) last year, we've decided to hold the two western NC workshops in November and the ones closer to the coast in December.
The cost to attend each event is $99 and lunch is included. See below for early registration details for each event. NC Licensed Surveyors and Engineers will receive 8 PDH credits and all attendees will receive a certificate confirming their attendance. We will have door prizes, software giveaways and special software or hardware pricing that is available the day of the show only.
We will be in Statesville on Tuesday, November 15th and Asheville on Thursday November 17th. Early bird registration is $89 through September 30th.
We will be in Wilmington on Tuesday, December 13th and Raleigh on Thursday December 15th. Early bird registration is $89 through October 31st.
You will be able to choose the sessions you wish to attend. This year's sessions include:
- GIS from A to Z and Responding to GIS-related RFPs
presented by Janet Jackson (GIS Janet) of Intersect
- Carlson Takeoff & Preparing Machine Control Data
presented by Todd Carlson of Carlson Software
- Intro to SurvNet & Least Squares
presented by Donnie Stallings, SurvNet's Original Developer
- CAD Standards Roundtable & Discussion
presented by Jennifer DiBona, That CAD Girl
- CAD Tips & Tricks and hints for sharing data with others
presented by Jennifer DiBona, That CAD Girl
- Overview of Carlson Software 2012
(Survey, Civil, Hydro, GIS, Point Clouds)
presented by Scott Griffin of Carlson Software
- Field to Finish with Carlson Survey & SurvCE and the Surveyor+ GPS System
presented by Butch Herter and Jeremy Taylor
- Preview of future Carlson hardware
such as the Tablet PC Data Collector w/RTK GPS
presented by Butch Herter and Jeremy Taylor
- Road Design and Site Design with Carlson Civil & Hydrology
presented by Scott Griffin of Carlson Software
Note that all classes are not scheduled at all events and locations. See each workshop announcement for specifics.
Seats are limited so register online, call 919.417.8351 or email us to register.
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National CAD Standards
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As many of you who have followed my work over the years probably know, I have long been a proponent of helping civil engineers and land surveyors adopt the National CAD Standards (NCS) for layering.
I first became familiar with the NCS in the early days of Civil 3d® because, to the best of my knowledge, that was the first civil/survey software program to incorporate the NCS standard layers into their drawing template files. Prior to that, I'd consulted with many organizations to help create a set of CAD Standard for their offices. As many or most of you probably know... What a PAIN! Because so many of us had come from the DCA®, Softdesk® and Land Desktop® worlds, the closest thing to a CAD standard across the industry was whatever the Land Desktop defaults were. For instance, contours could typically be found on layers CONT-MJR and CONT-MNR. The tin lines for a surface could usually be found on layer SRF-VIEW. The reason is that these were the Land Desktop default layers for these entities/features.
In the fall of 2010 I created NCS-based drawing template files (.dwt), standard linetype files (.lin) and standard symbol files (.dwg) that were included in the release of Carlson Software's 2011 products. The files were incorporated into Carlson's Draw Standard Item commands. I recorded a couple of webinars for Carlson that go into some detail about Layers & Block Management Standards and the Carlson's Draw Standard Item Feature for those who are interested in learning more.
In my opinion, the good thing about the NCS is that it's thorough and you can find a layer for just about anything. As I like to put it, if you need a layer for a porta-potty, it's probably in there somewhere. However, it's also scalable - you use Major Groups to define layers more broadly or the Minor Groups if you need to define layers more specifically.
The bad thing is that the layer standard originated with The American Institute of Architects and hasn't had the feel of being friendly to a civil/survey standard.
Over the last several months I've volunteered to be part of one of the NCS Committees tasked with updating and revising the NCS to better reflect civil & survey standards. The goals of the Civil Task Team include creating civil/survey related references in the text and incorporating more civil/survey procedures for drawing organization and file/folder naming conventions as well as adding content such as layers, linetypes and symbols that can be delivered with the NCS.
Other than layers, we will also be reviewing the portions of the standard relating to Drawing Set Organization, Sheet Organization, Schedules, Drafting Conventions, Terms & Abbreviations, Symbols, Notations, Code Conventions and Plotting Guidelines to find areas where we can incorporate more civil & survey-related data.
So, my question(s) for you... Assuming you've not already converted to the National CAD Standard, what's stopping you? I'm looking for general feedback from civil engineers and land surveyors to take back to our Task Team. I know Surveyors will love this, but you're really the key to helping make this change because surveyors usually start the files that percolate through the design process. So, if we can convince you it's worth using, we've gotten a good start.
Please email me or even give me a call at 919.417.8351 to provide your 2¢. If you haven't gotten a lot of exposure to the NCS and would like to learn more, again, feel free to email me or call. You can also watch this webinar where I discuss the topic or join us at one of our End of the Year Workshops where we'll have a CAD Standards Round Table & Discussion.
I look forward to hearing from you!
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Links to AutoCAD, IntelliCAD & Carlson
Articles & Webinars |
| Oh... I'm only a year or so late on a lot of this, but there are several webinars that I've presented for Carlson Software and articles that I've written for Professional Surveyor magazine that I've never gotten around to promoting in an email or on my website. For a complete list, you can visit our Support page here. Here are the most recent ones I've added:
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| Land Desktop Tip |
Let's face it, if the world were simple, all of our project sites would be oriented east-west so that we could get them to fit on our 24x36 paper better! Until we figure out how to make that happen, we all find ourselves having to decide the best method of rotating our drawings without messing up the coordinate system in our drawings.
The two primary methods in AutoCAD and IntelliCAD have been using the DVIEW command with the TWIST option or changing the User Coordinate System (UCS). As with anything else, both methods have advantages and disadvantages. I have posted a handout on UCS vs DVIEW Twisting here.
Land Desktop had another method (used somewhat rarely, in my estimation) that allowed the user to change the Drawing Orientation to achieve the same results as DVIEW or UCS Rotation. I was never a fan of this command, mainly because it always seemed to be irreversible - or at least I was never smart enough to figure it out. I could manage to reverse it if I opened the drawing in Land Desktop, but never had much luck making the change once the drawing was opened in another program.
So, I was interested to find this article that goes a long way toward explaining how this feature works. I don't use Land Desktop any longer, but I know that many of you still do and I thought you may find it helpful. Good Luck! |
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| You Are Wasting Your Money On Civil 3d |
You can admit it... You thought this was the next installment of my Why I Chose Carlson Over Civil 3D® posts, didn't you?
It's OK, when I first saw the headline You're Wasting Your Money on Civil 3D, I did a double-take thinking maybe I had written it! Only joking...
Besides the provocative headline, it's a very interesting take on this consultant's experience in helping folks implement Civil 3d. I didn't state it quite so boldly, but the article does somewhat track with my thoughts on the problems with Civil 3d although we come to different conclusions. He's obviously a fan of the software and has seen both successful and dreadful implementations so those of you beating your head against the wall, give him a try.
In the meantime, here are my posts again for those who missed them: Why I Chose Carlson Over Civil 3D, Carlson vs Civil 3d: The Conversation Continues and Carlson vs Civil 3d: Revisited.
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Carlson Software Tip
Best Fit Profiles |
The Best Fit Profile command was added to Carlson Civil in 2011. This is quite the handy little routine to fit vertical curves and vertical tangents into a series of points along a centerline alignment.
For this example, I started with points along a centerline alignment at an interval of approximately 50'.
I next used the command Create Profile From... Points On Centerlin to create and save a Carlson Profile (.pro) file. The resulting profile was created using tangents from point to point and looks rather choppy as you can see below. This command is available in both Carlson Survey & Carlson Civil.
Next, in Carlson Civil, go to the Profiles menu and then Profile Utilities. Choose the Best Fit Profile command and set the design criteria.
After applying the Best Fitdesign criteria to the orignial profile (.pro) file, the new Profile (.pro) file looks like this:
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| Totally Random Tip of the Day |
If you can't trust The Discovery Channel, who can you trust? I can't say I've tried it, but people online swear it works as advertised.
Boost Your Wi-Fi Signal With Only A Beer Can
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