Carlson Survey, of course! And, if you truly need ONLY Carlson Survey, you have an option between Survey with IntelliCAD or For Your AutoCAD or Survey with embedded AutoCAD (OEM).
But, I find a lot of surveyors also need Carlson GIS for bringing in aerial photos, images of quad and soils maps.
And, this is a little out of the box, but if you’re a surveyor who does a lot of construction staking, I highly recommend Carlson Civil as well. Carlson Civil has a lot of tools that are meant to be used for design but, in my experience, can be invaluable for stakeout.
Most of these tools are in the 3D Data menu of Carlson Civil and include:
- 2D to 3D Polyline by Points and by Text with Leader
- Assign Contour Elevations
- Pad Polyline by Interior Text
- Draw Building Perimeter Polyline
- Convert Spot Elevations to Points
- Points by Slope
If you need Survey plus any of these other programs, you will have to use Carlson Survey with IntelliCAD or For Your AutoCAD because Survey and Takeoff are the only programs available on the embedded AutoCAD (OEM) platform.
And if you need Survey plus any of these other programs, you may want to consider the Civil Suite because the bundled pricing is often better than buying 2 or more individual modules.