Carlson released the 2014 version of their desktop products today. This includes: Civil Suite, Civil, Survey, Hydrology, GIS, Takeoff Suite, Construction, Point Cloud, Geology, Surface/Underground Mining and Natural Regrade.

The 2014 embedded-AutoCAD versions of Takeoff Suite and Survey have not yet been released.

Carlson Desktop products include IntelliCAD 7.2b and can run on top of full AutoCAD-based products versions 2004-2014. This includes AutoCAD, Map, Land Desktop and Civil 3d. Also, anyone using the FREE IntelliCAD that comes with Carlson is still eligible for a FREE GIS Starter Kit from Esri which includes ArcMap. [This offer ended on 12/31/2013]

You can download Carlson 2014 here.

View the “Survey and Civil – What’s new in 2014” webinar here

If you are using 2013 and are current on your annual maintenance contract, you can click here to look up your new 2014 serial number online. You will need to enter your contact information and your 2013 serial number in order to generate the 2014 serial number. You can find your serial number by opening Carlson Software and going to Help > About Carlson Software > Change Registration.

If you have trouble finding your serial number or would like to know the cost to upgrade any product to 2014, please email me with your request.

Click here for the full list of improvements in Carlson 2014

As we’re all getting ready for the release of Carlson’s 2014 desktop products, Carlson Software has scheduled a series of 5 lunchtime webinars to introduce new features and enhancements. See below for details and registration links:

Carlson Survey and Civil 2014
Wednesday, July 24th – presented by Scott Griffin, Director of Sales

Carlson Construction 2014
Wednesday, July 31st – presented by Todd Carlson, Takeoff Product Manager

Carlson Hydrology 2014 and all new Carlson Trench
Wednesday, August 7th – Mark Long, Developer, & Todd Carlson

Carlson Mining 2014
Wednesday, August 14th – Grant Wenker, Director, Mining Division

All new CADnet
Wednesday, August 21st – Jim Carlson, Regional Sales Director

All new GeoTech
Wednesday, August 28th – Dave Sanford, Regional Sales Director

Todd Carlson helped me out with a demonstration of Carlson Takeoff a couple months ago and the company we were presenting to was looking for some particular features in a mass haul analysis routine. They had looked at several other programs as well as Takeoff and had yet to find a solution to their particular issue.

Fast-forward about a month and Todd followed up to let us know that the new functionality had been incorporated into the software and would be available in Carlson Civil and Carlson Construction/Takeoff 2014. This is a perfect illustration of how responsive Carlson is to their customers (or even prospects, in this case).

I asked Todd to write up a little preview of the new Mass Haul Analysis routine we’ll see in Carlson 2014:

Mass Haul Analysis in a nutshell:
Mass Haul Analysis determines the volume and haul distance for groups of net cut and net fill station ranges along a road. The program calculates the optimized cut to fill movements so that the total volume-distance moved is minimized.

New Feature:
When dealing with multiple external hauls, users can now input the distance (and a “road conditions” factor) a borrow pit or dump pile is from its entry station. The program will then use this information when minimizing earth movement along the road.

For example, as shown in the first graphic below, an image of the area was inserted into the drawing from Google Earth or the Esri Mapping Service. CAD polylines were sketched along the travel paths from multiple pit locations to the project site.

Then, purely based off stationing, borrow pit (A) may be closer to a fill area than borrow pit (B). However, if the distance from borrow pit (B) to its entry station is closer than borrow pit (A)’s, the program may determine to use (B) as the borrow pit over (A) to optimize the earth movement.

Learn more about Carlson Civil and Carlson Takeoff

From Carlson’s website:

Featuring hundreds of additions and improvements, Carlson SurvCE 3.0 supports the widest range of popular and new release RTK GPS and conventional/robotic total stations of any other data collection software on the market.

SurvCE 3.0 has been released and is now ready for download. Constantly being upgraded, SurvCE features an optional icon-based interface and new Cloud-based messaging, file transfer, NGS monument recall, simplified stakeout methods and powerful GPS measurement averaging and blunder detection in the field (with accuracies in-between RTK and post-processing).

The Carlson SurvCE 3.0 upgrade is offered for just $150 for Carlson customers already using SurvCE 2.0 and above. The price to purchase SurvCE remains the same as it has since 2007.

Literally 100s of enhancements have been built into SurvCE 3.0.

Click here for SurvCE 3.0 Features

Click here for SurvCE 3.0 Screen Shots

Click here for SurvCE 3.0 System Requirements

Click here for SurvCE 3.0 Supported Hardware

Click here to purchase and also, sign up here for our newsletters to be notified of upcoming hardware and software special discounts!

File this under “Myths”…

I hope this isn’t widespread, but I received the following email yesterday and think it’s important to respond publicly. The email is posted in its entirety except for the name and contact info of the author.

Hello Jen & Jeremy,

I became acquainted with your site (and I believe Jen was on a “webcast” or video I had watched) when my former employer made the switch from Civil 3D to Carlson Civil several years back. I am an engineer and have been put into the role of upgrading AutoCAD and Carlson or making sure that my current company can continue to do what is necessary, which involves using CAD much less that in my consulting life.

A local Autodesk reseller paid us a visit and indicated that Carlson and Autodesk as companies have not reached an agreement to continue further compatibility. Sounds like a licensing ($$) agreement issue, to me, that may or may not be temporary. This salesperson also indicated that the new version of Carlson would not work with anything beyond AutoCAD 2010 which we are currently running with Carlson 2011. As a note, My former company did not update AutoCAD every year depending upon what features were actually new so I am very OK with not upgrading if not entirely necessary.

I would greatly appreciate any information or insight you could give on the subject. You can reach me via this e-mail or the phone number in the signature.

Kind regards,

I contacted Carlson and requested a direct reply:

Hi Jennifer,

Carlson Software is a current member of the Audodesk Developer Network (ADN) which gives access to the current Autodesk products. We expect to release Carlson’s 2014 products, including those running on top of IntelliCAD, AutoCAD 2014 and AutoCAD OEM, in the Summer of 2013.

Dave Carlson

Also, for the record, I currently run Carlson 2013 on top of IntelliCAD and on top of Civil 3d 2012.

Updated: Next live webinar will be on Wednesday, April 10th

You can sign up here: https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/859901974

Sooo…. This is pretty intriguing.

Anyone who has attended one of my CAD Standards Round Table classes has heard me say, “To have an effective CAD Standard, you must make it easier to do things the right way than it is to do it the wrong way.”

Well, I’m not finished with my research yet, but the CAD Standards Manager developed by CAD Masters may be just the application to make that happen. It can be installed on top of your AutoCAD-based programs to help organize your standardized layers, symbols, linetypes, dimension styles, etc. One of the best parts, to me, is that it supports multiple standards. If you have a client that requires you deliver your work product to their particular standard, this program can accommodate that too.

You can check out a pre-recorded webinar demonstrating their 2013 release here or download this flyer detailing the highlights of the program.

Or, better yet, sign up for their next live webinar here: https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/621720174 See Above. It will be held on Tuesday, March 12, 2013 from 10:30 AM – 11:30 AM PDT (2:30-3:30 PM ET) See Above. Since this is a live presentation, you will have a chance to ask questions to see if the program will support your specific needs.

I have a simple request… If you sign up for the live webinar, please let them know you heard about it from That CAD Girl.

Carlson’s 30th Anniversary User Conference will be held in Cincinnati Ohio from April 7-10, 2013.

In addition to 3 days of instruction and having the chance to work directly with Carlson programmers and tech support staff, they have a super-special offer for current users of SurvCE. User Conference attendees who are also license holders of SurvCE 1.x or 2.x will be able to claim a free upgrade to SurvCE 3.0, to be released during the conference. Just bring your older SurvCE serial number(s) with you to the User Conference. (Note: there’s a limit of two SurvCE serial numbers per registrant.)

There are a lot of great classes covering the desktop products as well as data collection and hardware.

Click here for class descriptions

and

Click here to register

Sponsors this year are:

Juniper Systems

Hemisphere GPS

NovAtel

SatLab

HHCS Handheld USA Inc.

MGBtech

Dimension Funding

Monsoon Networks, Inc.

Now that many (most? all?) new computers are shipping with Windows 8, Carlson Software users are curious whether or not their software will run on the new operating system.

I recently asked Carlson’s tech support team about the compatibility of Carlson with Windows 8 and received the following response:

At this time, Carlson 2013 is not officially supported on Windows 8. However, testing we have done on Windows 8 has been largely successful with the following observations:

• If Carlson installs cleanly without error, it should run correctly.
• In some cases, you may encounter install errors. We are currently addressing these issues for Carlson 2013 products – these updates will be available in the next builds that we post.
• Older Carlson products will remain AS IS – we will not be updating the installs. But again, but if a given product installs without error, it should run fine.
• As a general rule, products supported on Windows 7 should run on Windows 8.
• It has been our experience that using the “compatibility mode” option is not recommended.

I’m re-posting this once more because of the continued interest.

For several years Esri has been offering a FREE “GIS Starter Kit” for anyone who uses Carlson with IntelliCAD. This program will not go on forever but, to my knowledge, is still active. [This offer ended on 12/31/2013]

There are a couple of limitations that I’m aware of: existing Esri customers are not eligible and you can only take advantage of the offer one time… Not once for every seat of Carlson with IntelliCAD that you purchase or own.

The GIS Starter Kit includes:

• ArcGIS ArcView desktop software
• A copy of the book A to Z GIS: An Illustrated Dictionary of Geographic Information Systems
• A copy of GIS Tutorial: Workbook for ArcView 9, Third Edition

If you are a current user of Carlson with IntelliCAD and meet the requirements above, you can call 1-800-GIS-XPRT (1-800-447-9778) and request the Carlson-IntelliCAD GIS Starter Kit – You will want to have your Carlson serial number handy.

Our November newsletter has been posted… Read it here: November 2012 Newsletter