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

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

That CAD Girl is working with Carlson Software and Advance Acceptance to offer special, low rate financing through 8/31/2015.

Rates of 0%, 1.99% and 2.99% are available for new software purchases and for Carlson BRx5 GNSS Receivers. Minimum purchase is $5000.

A few other details apply – call or email to find out more or click here to download the promotional brochure.

That CAD Girl is working with Carlson Software and Advance Acceptance to offer special, low rate financing through 8/31/2015.

Rates of 0%, 1.99% and 2.99% are available for new software purchases and for Carlson BRx5 GNSS Receivers. Minimum purchase is $5000.

A few other details apply – call or email to find out more or click here to download the promotional brochure.

If you missed this presentation, you can watch it here

I’m very pleased to announce that Bruce Carlson, President of Carlson Software, will be presenting an encore of his Intro to Precision 3d Culverts webinar for me on Tuesday March 31st.

Even though he’d barely finished the first webinar and I was asking him to do another one, Bruce was excited and ready for the next one! He emailed:

Perfect—I kicked myself after yesterday’s webinar for not showing multiple barrels, which shows solid cutting into the headwalls instantaneously and is very impressive, searing in the memory when people see it (since pipes cut in and re-size accurately to smaller pipes). I won’t leave that one out on March 31st.

This is a bonus to my regular monthly webinars and no previous purchase is required… It’s open to all and you can register here: Register Now! for Precision 3d Culverts Webinar with Bruce Carlson

Also, don’t forget that Carlson will be hosting their User Conference at the end of April. You can learn more by following this link. I’ll be presenting 3 training sessions and I hope to see you all there!

From the 3/15/2015 press release: 

Just released, Carlson’s revolutionary Precision 3D Design-Culverts software is an easy-to-use program for designing stormwater-related systems.

Much more than just a visualization tool, the software utilizes the newest technologies to allow drag and drop options for strategically placing pipes and culverts and for selecting headwalls and endwalls from an ever-growing list of manufacturers. It enables the sizing of culverts and delineation of drainage areas, plus tracking of runoff from surface models.

“You can place and also easily move culverts and headwalls to new locations with full dtm restoration,” says Bruce Carlson, president of Carlson Software. “Engineers will get instant feedback to changes to their on-screen design.”

Once a digital terrain model from CAD, Google Earth, or other source is imported, the on-screen image accurately reflects the materials represented, such as roadways, embankments, rocks, fields, etc.

Other innovations in the software include the ability to:

• Grade surfaces for both upstream and downstream designs;
• Delineate drainage and ponding areas;
• Determine peak flow automatically from CN and C factors and terrain;
• Size culverts and place at low points;
• Choose from multiple barrel options;
• Output PDF reports for any selected culvert pipes having flow and headwater across multiple storm events; and
• Use for retention pond design and pond dewatering.

Carlson Precision 3D Design-Culverts is made to integrate easily into Carlson engineering software, Carlson Civil and Carlson Hydrology. It is also made to work with AutoCAD® and MicroStation® software applications.

I’ve just updated my list of Upcoming Webinars for the next few months. There are several new and reconfigured sessions and I’ve got Mark Long, Carlson’s Hydrology expert, on board to show a lot of the design capabilities in Carlson Hydrology in March. Mark’s the best and I think you’ll get a lot out of his training.

A couple other classes are on the list because you asked for them! They’re narrowly focused classes on very specific topics: Carlson Annotation, Surfaces and Breaklines and Working with Paper Space, Sheet Set Manager and Creating Custom Title Blocks. You’ll have ample opportunity to ask questions and start using what you learn right away!

Here’s the link to pre-register and, if you’re not eligible to attend for free, here is the link where you can purchase a year’s access to the webinars.

It’s workshop and PDH time again!

We’re mostly following the same calendar as last year with a 1/2 day in Asheville and 2 full days in Statesville and Raleigh. Each event includes drinks, snacks, lunch, door prizes/giveaways and “day-of-show” pricing for Carlson Software including new seats and maintenance renewals.

Register for the Statesville events by Sept 30^th or for the Raleigh events by Oct 31^st for early registration discounts. Late fees will be applied to registrations within one week of each event.

Carlson Software Workshop in Asheville NC, Monday Nov 17^th
View Announcement  –  Register Now!

Statesville Workshop for Surveyors and Contractors, Tuesday Nov 18^th
View Announcement   –  Register Now!

Statesville Workshop for Engineers and Designers, Wednesday Nov 19^th
View Announcement  –  Register Now!

Raleigh Workshop for Surveyors and Contractors, Tuesday Dec 9^th
View Announcement  –  Register Now!

Raleigh Workshop for Engineers and Designers, Wednesday Dec 10^th
View Announcement  –  Register Now!

I get this question quite a lot and thought it would be a good topic for Tips of the day…

Problem: Lines or polylines of a boundary show up inside your open property corner symbols. See the image below for an example:

The additional problem is that, if you trim the lines inside the symbols to make it look cleaner, you’re actually modifying the length of property lines so the distances from corner-to-corner are no longer accurate.

Here’s an alternative: You can download a modified set of Carlson’s point symbols that include a “wipeout” entity that hides the lines behind/underneath the open symbols instead of trimming them and changing the length of the lines. Using the new set of symbols, the same property lines and symbols look like those in the image below (notice that the distances of linework are unchanged):

How to do this?

Here is the knowledge base article on Carlson’s website that includes a ZIP file with the new symbol DWG files and instructions on where the files must be saved.

Last fall I was interviewed by Penelope Grenoble for an article in an upcoming issue of Grading and Excavation Contractor magazine. The article has been published in the January-February 2012 issue and can be found online here: Lean and Mean: Training in Tight Times

For those who are interested, it looks like they also offer a free subscription to their print magazine to qualified readers.