On November 1, 2022 Carlson Software released the 2023 version of their desktop products. With the 2023 release, Carlson is focusing more on performance and stability and a little less on new bells and whistles… I’m guessing the next version will be heavy in the other direction!

Carlson 2023 products will ship with both a preview release of IntelliCAD 11.0 and 10.1 and can also run on top of your separately purchased license of AutoCAD 2018-2023.

Carlson Survey 2023 with embedded AutoCAD (OEM) is expected to be released within the next few weeks but it’s unclear at this time whether there will be a 2023 release of Takeoff OEM.

Any user who has purchased Survey OEM 2022 after 10/1/2022 will receive a free upgrade to Survey OEM 2023. If this applies to you, please Email us and we’ll make sure you get your free upgrade.

If you are currently running Carlson and have an active maintenance contract, you are eligible for a free upgrade to Carlson Software 2023. You will need your 2022 serial number and can use this Lookup screen to find your 2023 serial number.

If you’re a past customer of That CAD Girl, you may be able to find your Carlson Customer ID, serial numbers and maintenance reports on our new customer portal. You can access your portal by clicking here and entering your email address. If you haven’t been granted Admin privileges by your company’s primary point of contact, you may have limited access.

Request Pricing for upgrade

You can read more about the new features and find more information here on Carlson Software’s 2023 product page.

Don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel where you can find our Picks and Clicks videos plus several “Product Overview” recordings that demonstrate features in different programs.

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

And, don’t forget…

Very nice write-up by the folks at American Surveyor magazine… Around the Bend—A Visit to Carlson Software

Carlson announced their year-end specials early this year and they have lots of great offerings for hardware and software… but we’ve done a little better!

Click here to browse all the discounts – pricing is good through 12/31/2016. And, don’t forget! If you purchase new software through That CAD Girl you will be eligible for 12 months of our live and interactive webinars. You can see the list of upcoming webinars here.

If you’ve never attended one of our webinars, we’d love to have you attend as a guest for one of our upcoming sessions. Click here to send a request or to request a custom proposal or live demonstration.

Also (hint, hint) you may want to register for our newsletter because we MAY have other That CAD Girl exclusive specials to announce later this month!

I’m very excited to announce the official lineup for our end of year workshops!

We’ll be in the same locations this year and will generally follow the same format with a couple of exceptions. Based on your feedback we will have half-day sessions with Dean Goodman covering SurvNet Least Squares in both Statesville & Raleigh. And, by popular demand, we’re giving Mark Long his own room this year and he will be covering some pretty advanced material for roadway design and grading and also advanced hydrology.

Registration is now open!

Please note that the Hendersonville event has very limited seating and, once we hit our capacity, we’ll have to shuffle others off to Statesville. So, if Hendersonville is your first choice, make sure to register early.

All events are $99 for 8 hours and NC licensed engineers & surveyors will receive 8 PDH credits. Early registration discounts are available for Statesville & Raleigh only.

Also included at each event? Lunch! Snacks! Day-of-show pricing on software, hardware and maintenance renewals! Software giveaways!

2016 Hendersonville Workshop for Surveyors & Engineers on Tuesday, Nov 15^th

Topics: CAD & Carlson Tips & Tricks, Traverse Adjustment in Carlson Survey, Basics of Surfaces, Grading & Road Design

See More Details or Register Here

2016 Statesville Workshop for Surveyors on Wednesday, Nov 16^th

Topics: Dean Goodman with ½ day SurvNet Least Squares, CAD & Carlson Tips & Tricks, Beginning Surface Modeling, Centerlines & Profiles, Annotaton & Labeling Secrets of Carlson, Field to Finish from Start to Finish and Beyond Field to Finish – Using SurvCE, SurvPC & Carlson Survey to be More Productive

See More Details or Register Here

2016 Statesville Workshop for Engineers & Designers on Thursday, Nov 17^th

Topics: Mark Long with ½ day Advanced Roadway Grading and ½ day Advanced Hydrology, Drawing Cleanup & SiteNet for takeoffs and model building, Site Grading project from start to finish, Design Tools of Carlson Software and Profile & Cross Section Sheet Production

See More Details or Register Here

2016 Raleigh Workshop for Surveyors on Tuesday, Dec 6^th

Topics: Dean Goodman with ½ day SurvNet Least Squares, CAD & Carlson Tips & Tricks, Beginning Surface Modeling, Centerlines & Profiles, Annotaton & Labeling Secrets of Carlson, Field to Finish from Start to Finish and Beyond Field to Finish – Using SurvCE, SurvPC & Carlson Survey to be More Productive

See More Details or Register Here

2016 Raleigh Workshop for Engineers & Designers on Wednesday, Dec 7^th

Topics: Mark Long with ½ day Advanced Roadway Grading and ½ day Advanced Hydrology, Drawing Cleanup & SiteNet for takeoffs and model building, Site Grading project from start to finish, Design Tools of Carlson Software and Profile & Cross Section Sheet Production

See More Details or Register Here

Late yesterday afternoon Carlson Software released the 2017 version of their desktop software products! Click here to download 2017 and here to see the list of improvements in 2017.

If you are current on your maintenance plan, you can visit this page and use your 2016 serial number to retrieve your 2017 serial number.

If your maintenance has expired or you’re not able to generate your new 2017 serial numbers, please send me an email or request a proposal to find out pricing.

Many of you have been to our end-of-year workshops where we have a full day of presentations, software specials and giveaways but, because of holidays and travel etc, attending has not been an option for a lot of others who would like to attend.

So this is something new we’re trying in May – humor us as we’re going to try to replicate the workshops online! We won’t be able to serve our excellent Carolina BBQ but, other than that, we’re going to try to do everything else. Somehow.

Day One will be focused on Carlson Survey & GIS and Day Two on Civil & Hydrology – the details of each day’s classes are below.

Each day’s presentation will include 5 sessions and you will be able to attend any or all of them. Each session will vary in length and you will have an opportunity to ask questions and have them answered during the presentation.

Afterward we will be sending out email “confirmations of attendance” for each session that lists the name, date and time of the session, the presenter and how long you were logged into the session according to the Go To Webinar report. There is no guarantee you will be able to get PDH or CEU credit for the training but, depending on your state’s licensing board, the report we provide should be sufficient documentation.

Also, note that you must have registered and logged in under your personal name to get “credit” for attending each session. I will send reports of attendance based strictly on the details of the Go To Webinar report.

In addition to offering “day of show” software specials, we will also be doing software giveaways each day. It’ll be tricky but we’ll figure out a way!

The cost is $199 for each day of training but, if you are already eligible for my webinars (i.e. you’ve purchased software from me in the last 12 months) you can register for each day for $99. Also, we are offering $20 off for early registration.

There are limited “seats” available and the early registration deadline is May 6 – so sign up today!

See below for details and registration links

Survey & GIS Virtual Workshop  
Tuesday 5/17/2016 (registration deadline is Friday 5/13)

Register Here

All times Eastern

8:30 – 9:30 Jennifer DiBona – Tips & Tricks in CAD & Carlson Software

10:00 – 11:30 Jeremy Taylor PLS – Traverse Adjustment in Carlson Software

1:00 – 2:00 Jeremy Taylor PLS – Tips & Tricks in SurvCE/SurvPC & the Carlson Cloud

2:30 – 4:00 Scott Griffin, Director of Sales for Carlson Software – Field to Finish in Carlson Software (including tree surveys)

4:30 – 6:00 – Jennifer DiBona – Making Models from a Mess: Carlson Tools to Elevate 2D Drawings to 3D for Staking & Surface Models

Civil & Hydrology Virtual Workshop
Tuesday 5/24/2016 (registration deadline is Friday 5/20)

Register Here

All times Eastern

8:30 – 9:30 Jennifer DiBona – Tips & Tricks in CAD & Carlson Software (different material than 5/17)

10:00 – 11:30 Jennifer DiBona – Overview of Surfaces & Grading

1:00 – 2:30 Scott Griffin – Subdivision Layout & Design

3:00 – 4:30 Mark Long, Civil & Hydrology Support & Training for Carlson Software – Road Design, Site Design, Pond Design & Hydrology, Part 1

5:00 – 6:30 Mark Long – Road Design, Site Design, Pond Design & Hydrology, Part 2

One of Carlson’s Year-End Specials this year is for existing Carlson users to add Carlson CADNet for $995 – the retail price is $1,595 and maintenance is an additional $159.50. (Hint: I provide additional discounts for existing and new customers!)

Understandably this has generated a lot of renewed interest in this module. I have received a lot of calls and emails from folks requesting more information and wondering if, and how, CADNet might increase your productivity.  So, in response, I’ve decided to post the recording of my October 8, 2015 webinar on the topic, “Overview of Carlson CADNet – Working with Images & Converting to Linework”.

Click here to request a custom proposal for adding CADNet to your existing license, for a new “Super-Sweet-Suite” that includes Survey, Civil, Hydrology, GIS AND CADNet or other Carlson software or hardware products.

Click here to request a custom proposal.

Click here to learn more about my webinar series that’s included with every software purchase – We help you buy what you need AND use what you buy…

See below for access to the CADNet webinar recording:

Thanks to everyone who attended our workshops in Statesville & Hendersonville this month! We were pretty much busting the seams of our event space in Hendersonville and we’ll be better prepared for the crowd next year. I think it’s safe to say we’ll be back for a full day.

Here are a few snapshots of me and “the crew” who helped create this 3-ring circus.

From left: Jeremy Taylor, aka “That CAD Guy”; Mark Long, Civil & Hydrology Training and Support for Carlson Software; me; Scott Griffin, National Civil Sales Director for Carlson Software; Butch Herter, Director of Hardware for Carlson Software and Mike Jones, Inside Sales Support for Carlson Software.

Pardon the smirks – a crude comment was made instead of just saying “Cheese!”

Yeah, this is a little more honest.

I think we were at the end… of the day.

Tuesday in Statesville

Tiny bit of false advertising.

This is Jeremy, That CAD Guy, explaining the ins-and-outs of Traverse Adjustment in Carlson Survey.

Feel like you missed out? There’s still time to register for our encore presentations in Raleigh in mid-December. Click here to find out more

[See below for 8-7-2015 update]

Carlson Software made the 2016 version of their desktop software available for download yesterday. The products released include all desktop products that run with the included IntelliCAD or on top of your own AutoCAD-based software. The 2016 OEM/embedded AutoCAD versions of Survey and Takeoff are expected to be released in a month or so.

The programs included in this release include Civil Suite, Takeoff Suite, Survey, Civil, Hydrology, GIS, Basic Mining, Geology, Underground Mining, Surface Mining, Natural Regrade, Field, CADnet, GeoTech, Trench, Construction and Point Clouds. Carlson 2016 includes IntelliCAD 8.1 and can also be installed on top of any full AutoCAD-based software from 2010-2016. This includes AutoCAD, Map and Civil 3d but does NOT include AutoCAD LT.

You can see the full list of Carlson 2016 Improvements here.

One thing that’s new for 2016 is that there are separate downloads for 32- and 64-bit systems. You can download the 150731 Build of either file here.

If you are currently on Carlson’s maintenance plan, you can click here to find your 2016 serial number. You’ll need your 2015 serial number and primary contact information for the owner of the software. If you have trouble, feel free to email me and I’ll do what I can to help get you up and going. Or, request a proposal to upgrade or renew your maintenance now.

I can provide a 30 day trial if you’d like to test-drive for a bit and am also offering a free test-drive to one of my upcoming webinars. Starting with tomorrow’s Introduction to Carlson Software – Settings, Setup, Configuration & Points webinar, I’ll be presenting in the 2016 software.

If you’re curious how Carlson compares feature- and price-wise to Civil 3d, Land Desktop, Eagle Point, Terra Model or others, email me or follow these links to request a demo or request a custom proposal.

8/7/2015 Update: One other change to the platform support for Carlson 2016 will be important to a lot of you: Carlson 2016 with IntelliCAD no longer works on top of Windows XP; however, you can run Carlson 2016 on top of an AutoCAD 2010-2016 on an XP machine.

Microsoft released the Windows 10 operating system for PCs this week and a lot of Carlson users have jumped to install the shiny (and free) new thing. I always recommend waiting a few weeks for kinks and bugs to be worked out before installing anything that affects all your program installations and can have such a big impact on your productivity.

However, I’ve heard from a lot of you who’ve already tried it out with Carlson 2015 and even earlier versions. Most have had success but some have called or emailed with questions. I reached out to Carlson’s tech support to ask what Carlson users can expect with Windows 10 – this is the response I received:

We have tested Carlson 2016 on pre-release Windows 10 and did not see any issues in limited testing. We expect to have 2016 compatible with Windows 10 when it ships. We may address some minor issues with Carlson 2015 if they arise, but not older versions.

If you haven’t renewed your maintenance plan or upgraded for awhile, now is really a good time. If you renew your maintenance now, before 2016 is released, you will get an immediate upgrade to 2015 and then will also receive the upgrade to 2016. Also, if your maintenance has expired, your cost to renew maintenance will increase once 2016 is released because you’ll be an additional version behind.

Click here to request a proposal for new licenses, for upgrades or maintenance renewals and find out what other goodies That CAD Girl includes with your purchase.

Update: Carlson has now posted this to their website