Well, you can be the judge! This is a very well-developed Case Study authored by Carlson Survey Training Specialist Doug Aaberg and published in xyHt magazine (which you SHOULD subscribe to by-the way…)

I think regular attendees of our Webinar Series have gotten a bit of a preview of Doug’s case-study in the webinars he presented for us in March and April. Doug is already on the schedule for Carlson Survey Training for May and June and we have tentative plans for future, ongoing, monthly webinars with him.

Our webinar series is free for anyone who purchases software directly through That CAD Girl or you can purchase a 3-month or 12-month pass through our online store. If you’re not sure about all that… just pre-register here to attend as a guest. We’d love to have you!

And, although the webinars are intended to be live and interactive, if you’d really, really, REALLY like to see a recording of a webinar you missed, please email me and I’ll see what I can do 🙂

You don’t want to miss our webinar with CAD Specialist, Doug this week! He’s going to show some of the deep, dark secrets of Carlson’s Field to Finish!

If you’re using Field to Finish but want to have it do more for you, he’s going to show you several ways to do so. The focus of this CAD Specialist demonstration will be to reduce keystrokes and automate drafting using tree surveys, fixed parameters and companion codes.

Our webinar series is free for anyone who purchases software directly through That CAD Girl or you can purchase a 3-month or 12-month pass through our online store.

If you’re not sure about all that… just pre-register here to attend as a guest. We’d love to have you!

Wondering what Carlson has to offer? Check out these recent recordings for a tour of Carlson’s desktop software programs for surveyors, designers, engineers and construction contractors

Carlson with IntelliCAD

Carlson Civil Suite with Survey, Civil, Hydrology and GIS

Carlson Takeoff Suite with Construction, CADnet, Trench and GeoTech

I’m very excited to be taking part in this year’s Magnificent Seven – Western Regional Virtual Surveyors Conference.

This is an exciting joint effort between these 7 participants:

Alaska Society of Professional Surveyors

Arizona Professional Land Surveyors

California Land Surveyors Association

Land Surveyors’ Association of Washington

Montana Association of Registered Land Surveyors

Nevada Association of Land Surveyors

New Mexico Professional Surveyors

We are going through all of our orientations, setting up our Virtual Booth and are looking forward to interacting with everyone.

We will be posting updates soon that tell you when to plan on visiting our Virtual Networking Lounge for your chance to win a gift card for the highest score in our online CAD Test and for our schedule of 10 minute presentations on Carlson training and CAD Software Tips & Tricks, Introduction to IntelliCAD as an alternative to your AutoCAD and so much more.

In the meantime, please send us an email if you have any other Carlson training questions or are interested in attending any of our upcoming live, interactive webinars.

We got such great feedback from our Virtual Workshops back in December that I wanted to try to continue playing with the formats of Carlson webinars into 2021. So, for you longtime webinar attendees – I’m excited to announce that you’ll be seeing a lot more variety going forward!

Starting with the March, April and May schedules you’ll see that we have “regularly scheduled guests” such as Walt Liles of Terrain Technology, Mark Long and Doug Aaberg of Carlson Software. Each has agreed to conduct at least one webinar a month showcasing their specialty topics.

Walt and his partner Ashton Cary are my go-to guys for anything Carlson Takeoff related – estimating quantities, model building and any kind of data prep for office-to-field technology.

Mark… well, everybody knows and loves Mark. Mark is the product manager for Carlson Hydrology and P3D and there’s no one better for getting into the weeds of Carlson Civil and Hydrology (and P3d).

Doug Aaberg is the product manager for Carlson Survey. He is a licensed Land Surveyor and knows his stuff. He specializes in everything Carlson Survey, especially Field to Finish and LotNet. More recently, Doug has been focusing on establishing best practices for customizing and configuring Carlson Software to work in larger offices and across network deployments. Best practices for everything… Doug is great at figuring out what works for different companies and then providing the training to help implement it.

The March schedule for Carlson Webinars is shown below and you can click here to see the whole upcoming lineup. These webinars are included for FREE if you’ve purchased software from That CAD Girl so make sure to go here to pre-register for any and all you want to attend. If you haven’t yet purchased, please pre-register to attend as a guest.

• March 2^nd – Intro to Carlson Software – Settings, Setup, Configuration & Points
• March 10^th – Overview of Carlson Field to Finish
• March 11^th – Basics of Road Design in Carlson Civil with Mark Long
• March 23^rd – Drawing Cleanup for Model Building and Construction Staking with Walt Liles of Terrain Technology
• March 25^th – Best Practices for Network Solutions with Carlson’s GNSS RTK Systems with Doug Aaberg

Who said this…?

“…I came to realize that there were a variety of other CAD options out there, especially for those who didn’t want to pay the hefty AutoCAD price tag…”

Bruce Carlson, President of Carlson Software

Circa 2008…?

OR

Lynn Allen, Technology Evangelist for Autodesk from 1997-2018 and “someone who LOVES her AutoCAD”

Circa 2020… ?

Lynn Allen currently works as Global Technology Evangelist at Dassault Systèmes

“…I came to realize that there were a variety of other CAD options out there, especially for those who didn’t want to pay the hefty AutoCAD price tag. But were they good enough? Were they DWG file compatible? Were these “CAD-Clones” like cheap Louis Vuitton knock-offs or were they serious, robust, quality CAD solutions? And most importantly (for someone who LOVES her AutoCAD), could I possibly feel comfortable in a new CAD environment?”

Lynn has left Autodesk and joined the team at Dassault Systèmes, so she has had ample opportunity to check out DraftSight and see can it really replace AutoCAD in the workplace. Could she feel at home with DraftSight? Would she feel comfortable using DraftSight? I’ll let Lynn answer that:

“I am happy to say the answer is a great big “Yes!” Not only does DraftSight produce 100% compatible DWG files (complete with blocks, dimension styles, layers etc.) for a mere fraction of the price, but you will feel right at home with DraftSight in no time.”

Lynn Allen, DraftSight blog, 7/15/2020

Also see Cadalyst: Lynn Allen Gives AutoCAD Users a Quick Tour of DraftSight

Carlson Software to Give Users CAD Platform Choice

Carlson Software: Providing Customers a Choice

“If a user already has AutoCAD, versions 2000 all the way up to and including 2009, then they can work smoothly and effectively on those platforms. If they don’t,” he added, “and are looking for an alternative, effective and lower cost CAD, Carlson’s 2009 product comes with IntelliCAD built in, ready to use for no extra cost.”

Bruce Carlson, Business Wire 4/14/2008

 

Is the tide turning? Is the market finally working?

If DraftSight can be the answer, so can IntelliCAD – and for the same reasons. The quiet part has been said out loud… yay!

I am really looking forward to having Bruce Carlson, Dave Carlson and many of their talented development and support staff from Carlson Software be part of the fun December 15^th,16^th and 17^th!

Here is our “special guest” list…

• Bruce Carlson, President of Carlson Software
• Dave Carlson, VP of Programming for Carlson Software
• Leonid Entov, Head of IT for Carlson Software
• Lon Watson, Head of Support for Carlson Software
• Shan Lu, Hydrology Programmer for Carlson Software
• Sara Winter, Head of SurvCE Programming for Carlson Software
• John Gerber, Head of SurvCE Support for Carlson Software
• Steve Cummings, CPC & P3d Topo Specialist for Carlson
• Dwayne Tindall, Account Specialist for CAD Masters
• Walt Liles with Terrain Technology

And we can’t forget our A-Team aka the “regular workshop crew”…

• Scott Griffin, Global Sales Director for Carlson Software
• Butch Herter, Director of Hardware for Carlson Software
• Mark Long, Civil & Hydro Specialist for Carlson Software
• Mike Jones, Administrative Support Specialist for Carlson Software
• Doug Aaberg, Survey Support for Carlson Software

Cost is $99 per person and registration includes:

• your option to attend any or all sessions over 3 days
• certificates of attendance for professional development
• Day of Show Specials on software, upgrades and maintenance renewals
• door prizes and giveaways

Click here to register or download the workshop announcement with the Agenda and details

Carlson has recently announced their year-end pricing for desktop software. This year’s specials include Survey with embedded AutoCAD (OEM), Select Suite Pick 2, Select Suite Pick 4, Civil Suite, Takeoff Suite and P3D Topo with Hydro.

Discounts will expire on 12/31/2020! You may also want to keep an eye on our Active Coupon Codes for additional discounts.

And, don’t forget! All software purchases through That CAD Girl are eligible for a year’s access to our live, interactive webinar training sessions.

If you’d like to learn more about Carlson Civil Suite and Takeoff Suite, you can view some of our recent recordings here.

Carlson released the 2021 version of their desktop products on Wednesday Sept 23^rd. [Update: Carlson 2021 embedded AutoCAD (OEM) was released on 10/21/2020]

The products released on Wednesday included an embedded copy of IntelliCAD 10 and can also run on top of your separately purchased license of AutoCAD 2017-2021. Carlson Survey and Takeoff 2021 with embedded AutoCAD (OEM) are expected to be released within the next few weeks and an update will be posted here.

If you are currently running Carlson and have an active maintenance contract, you are eligible for a free upgrade to 2021. You will need your 2020 serial number and can use this Lookup screen to find your 2021 serial number.

You can read more about the new features and find more information on Carlson Software’s 2021 product page and you can view a recording showing 2021 updates here.

FAQ: What are the improvements to Carlson over previous versions? (a running thread)