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

Well, it says November 1st but I just received an email that they’ve launched this promotion today to coincide with a magazine advertisement! I know a lot of you have been waiting for this promotion and it’s finally here.

For a limited time I’m also offering a special “build-your-own-suite” package that will allow you to choose any 4 of these programs to create the bundle that works best for you: Survey, Civil, Hydrology, GIS, CADNet, Trench or GeoTech.

You can request a custom proposal if you’re interested in the “build-your-own-suite” or visit my online store here to purchase the standard Civil Suite and maintenance.

Remember, all purchases through That CAD Girl make you and your co-workers eligible for a year of our live, interactive webinars (see list of upcoming topics here) so you won’t simply be left on your own to learn a new software. Documentation of attendance will be provided so you may also receive PDH credit from your licensing agency.

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

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

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.

Carlson posted the 2015 versions of their for CAD (IntelliCAD or AutoCAD 2004-2015) on Tuesday afternoon… you can Download Carlson 2015 products with IntelliCAD here. The 2015 versions of embedded AutoCAD products (Survey and Takeoff OEM) will be released later this summer.

If your maintenance contract is current or you have purchased 2014 products within the past 90 days, you’re automatically eligible for an upgrade to 2015. Click here to look up your 2015 serial number using your 2014 serial number.

Click here to review the list of all improvements

Click here to read about updates in Carlson Survey 2015

Click here to read about updates in Carlson Civil and Carlson Hydrology 2015

Click here to read about updates in Carlson Takeoff Suite 2015 – including Construction, CADNet, Trench and GeoTech

There are price increases with 2015 products. Click one of these links if you would like to Request a Demonstration or Request a Custom Proposal to upgrade to 2015 or purchase new software.

Please follow this link to see if you’re eligible for our monthly webinars including CAD and Carlson Tips & Tricks, Intro to Survey and GIS and What’s New in Carlson 2015.

Carlson Software posted a new build with updates to Survey 2014 with embedded AutoCAD on 7/14/2014. The latest build can be downloaded here: Carlson Software Downloads Page.

To find your current “build”, open your Carlson desktop software and go to the Help menu and click About Carlson. The current build is listed on the top line in the text window and corresponds to the date it was posted. For instance, the build shown below – 140211 – was released on Feb 11, 2014.

Looking forward to seeing old friends and meeting new ones at the New Jersey SurvCon this week. I’ll be teaching Field to Finish and Surface Modeling with Carlson Survey on Wednesday afternoon. Please stop by our booth to say ‘Hi’ and meet The Other CAD Girl.

Charlotte area firm seeks survey technician with AutoCAD and survey-specific software experience. Knowledge of Carlson Survey and SurvCE a plus. Preferred candidates will have experience in both field and office and across many survey disciplines.

Pre-employment drug testing and background check required, salary dependent on experience.

If you are interested in this position, please email your resume to [email protected] and I will forward it on to this employer.