Civil 3D vs. Carlson

[neilw]

We are a Land Desktop based civil engineering consultant and are considering converting to Civil 3D, Bentley Power Civil or some other product such as Carlson. I have viewed several recorded Web Seminars for Carlson's Civil software and it looks impressive. Of course there are many factors to consider when chosing software and those factors may not be apparent until one starts using it. Usually the strengths are more easily discerned since they are promoted by the developer. Thus I would like to get some objective feedback as to the what are the weaknesses of Carlson vs. Civil 3D. If you would rather not comment in the forum, please feel free to reply to me via email: nwilson AT sec DASH landmgt.com

TIA

[Dent Cermak]

http://www.carlsonds.com/

Send an email to Paul Carlson (No kin to the software guys) at the site linked above. Paul gives very honest and objective evaluations for both products. I believe he handles both products, but he will be more than able to asses your needs and give you an honest judgement on which software will work best for you.
The cost factor plays a key role in this decision. The new Acad 2010 line seems to require a consultant to properly set up. This can be a major expense and a factor to look at closely and keep in mind.
My company is a LandDesktop based surveying and mapping firm and we are moving over to Carlson because that puts the office and the field crews on the same software. Plus, I cannot see paying the Civil3D price when all I need is the survey portion. Our transition will allow us to buy software AND training for less than the AutiCad update fees. "It's all about the Benjamin's".

[tstrickland]

Another thing to consider: How's the support for C3D?
Carlson is great.

[bpierce]

We used Land Desktop then tried to switch to Civil3D. Implementing Civil 3D was problematic and extremely costly (install time, software glitches, subscription costs, hardware upgrades, and time lost learning and trying to set up standards) so we made the leap to Carlson Civil. We have been very pleased with Carlson Civil. Carlson Civil handles everything our office needs without being overly complex.

It appears to me that the Autodesk makers are most concerned about continuous cash flow and Carlson is more worried about keeping their users happy. If you buy Civil3D you will pay about $1000 per seat for subscription (ouch) and if you want to "downgrade" your Civil3D licenses to ACAD to lower the subscription costs to only $500 per month they wont let you.

Hope this helps you.

[neilw]

After a few days playing around in a Demo version I'm seeing some problems. First off the tutorials are very hard to follow as the graphics are too small to view and the steps are poorly outlined in my opinion.

Also, I laid out some pads and ponds to see how the The Pad Design Template and Pond Design Template tools work. When editing a pad or pond I found that sometimes the graphics would fail to respond to the tools, perhaps because the reactors were corrupted, and then I could not close the tool to get control again. I had to kill Carlson to regain control. I've also experienced numerous crashes, more than I would expect from a mature product.

I am running 2009 Civil Suite Demo on Intellicad with the latest Intellicad update.

I did contact carlsonds.com and have yet to hear back from them.

I will say that the regional rep. has been very supportive and even came to my office while he was in town.

[Dent Cermak]

In all honesty, I think your problem is with the Intellicad portion of the product. Intellicad has come a LONG way, bit it still is not AutoCad nor is it as robust and stable as it should be.
I really haven't looked at the Civil package, but the Survey setup comes with an AutoCad kernal and Intellicad. Perhaps you need to load the AutoCad version and try it?

[neilw]

I have ACAD 2010 at home so I can't run Civil 2009 on it. I am also demo-ing at work on ACAD 2004 so I'll get a change to compare that way. So far I haven't had time to try the tools that gave me trouble at home. I'll post an update after I run some tests.

[ColC]

I could not comment on Civil3D but I have lots of positives for the Carlson products. My time with survey software dates back to the early 1970's, I have some experience in programing myself and have experienced the progression of a multitude of software over my working career.

I have been using the Carlson product since 2004. I have found the innovation and ideas that have been developed in the software over that time has been impressive and exciting. In each upgrade there have been monumental leaps in the functionalism of the software. It is possible that they could be accused of at times being to ambitious with the product as there have been times where the bugs do seem to be a bit frustrating. The most dramatic of which was the switch/addition of the Intellicad platform. It is my understanding this was a change which was thrust upon Carlson and limited the usual de-bugging period.

Over the period of the Intellicad introduction there was a concerted attempt the resolve the issues. I have found that the number bugs have been been diminishing rapidly over the the last twelve months. I have always found the responses from support to be up near the best. In my case, some of the most significant bugs were attributable to the Intellicad program and the conflicts it had with some of my hardware and software. I operate in Australia and I consistently get quicker response times from Carlsons to my problems than I do from some companies in the same suburb as my office. The permutations and combinations of the individual setups and demands on software cannot be expected to fully resolved in any software release let alone in a the complex area of survey & civil applications. I have received 6 or more patches for the Intellicad version over the last twelve months and a multitude of email responses to my queries. This is to me, an indication of a company focused on a producing a quality product.

The ongoing education which is made possible through the forums and the downloadable webinars provide an invaluable link to the developments in the software.

Back in 2004 I was debating the conversion of my existing Australian based software to Autocad LDD when the Carlson product was first introduced to me. I chose the Carlson package despite the many non-metric defaults and sometimes unfamiliar language. I have no regrets whatsoever in the decision I made back then, and I look forward in great anticipation to the future Carlson products.

[Gibtruck]

V2010 Carlson Civil on Itellicad allows layer state saving

[emorse4487]

V2010 Carlson Civil on Itellicad allows layer state saving

Can't believe this one has slipped past me... I've been swearing to myself for 2 years about this! I wonder what else I've missed...

[monksjm]

I've used Land Desktop, Microstation (bentley) and Carlson (currently using). Hands down across the board there is no competition. When it comes to product, ease of learning curve, ease of use, user friendly, file transfer friendly (no non basic autocad entities), product output, design tools, organizational tools and by far customer support, Carlson is hands down the best product out there. To me the transition over from Land was very easy. Yes there are things that need tweaking (flat triangles) but for the most part, this product is by and large the best on the market. The tech support is great too. Not all the time do they have the answer, but they work with you to find an answer or solution to the problem, which includes direct contact with the head designer, Dave Carlson. Another great thing to note, is with each release, they do not re haul the program, they respond to their users by adding USEFUL content, not useless zoom graphics, ribbons or removing useful tools or burying them in some system variable that you need a phd in programming to figure out. I've been nothing but pleased and have felt my design production time has decreased and my design ability has increased.

[neilw]

Would you mind providing a little more background on your experience with the other software? What Bentley software did you use and to what extent? Also, to what extent did you use Civil 3D? What kind of work do you do, i.e. Site design, Surveying, Highways etc.

[monksjm]

I'm a civil designer. 12+ years experience. Worked on Autocad since release 12 for DOS. Used Softdesk V8, then Land desktop when it became available around 2000. I've used LD 2000, 2000i, 2002-2007 before completely switching to Carlson in 2008. Since then have been using Carlson. I do landfill design and site design, this includes doing roads, site grading, pads, volume calcs, etc... I have done some gps surveys using Carlson also. Used Microstation 8 while doing highway design back around 2002-03. I felt this was the biggest step back and lost more time in learning curve and mistakes due to it not being like AutoCAD which at that time i had been doing for over 6 years or so. Found it to be too reliant on standards and not flexible. I a "one hand on the keyboard and one on the mouse" user so i basically had to sit on my hand so i would stop typing entry commands. Very icon based. Civil 3d i had very little interaction with. My company was frustrated with it (as seen in the post by bpierce above. So when i came on board a little over 2 years ago we transitioned to Carlson pretty quickly and never looked back. Now i also have a number of colleagues and friends in the business (site design etc.) that do use civil 3d and have run into nothing but problem after problem. Work is being done, but it's being altered away from the C3d format so it can be finished in most cases.

Where are you located? Someone i would recommend you speaking with would be Gary Rosen. He was "Professor Land Nut" before jumping ship to Carlson because he believed in the product and is now the Northeast rep. He's very knowledgeable in the differences between LDT and Carlson civil and was very involved in the development of the software. His email is grosen@carlsonsw.com Contact him and discuss it a bit.

[neilw]

I am in Arizona. I was in contact with Jim Reinbold several months ago and demo'ed Carlson Civil for about 30 days. While it had it's strengths I also found several deficiencies that I considered significant enough to discontinue evaluation. It's still an option for us though as we haven't committed to any one product yet.

I'm using LDT, Bentely Power Civil and Civil 3D 2010. So far I am favoring Bentley Power Civil over everything else. It has taken a while to learn ustn but I prefer it over Autocad now. Yes you do have to get used to a different workflow but it's many strengths over ACAD make it a more efficient CAD platform in my opinion.

[emorse4487]

Before switching to Bentley I would suggest a wide scale test by your CAD technicians. I found Power Civil to be incredibly hard to use, primarily because of my experience with AutoCAD based products. New technicians will be lost regardless of what software you put them in front of; your "seasoned" drafters will be fairly upset with you for migrating away from AutoCAD...

I found Carlson to be easier to use than Land Desktop and significantly easier to pick up than C3d. I had been using using LDT for 7 years and C3D for almost 2 years before switching to Carlson.

C3d is great for certain design operations (pipe networks come to mind), but not 1 of the projects I worked on were created exclusively with C3d (invariably had to open them in LDT to finish them). My productivity dropped significantly after trying Power Civil and I didn't feel the significant learning curve and drop in production was worth it. Prepare yourself for increased training costs to get your drafters up to speed BEFORE implementing the new software.

We are currently running 5 seats of Carlson Survey, 2 civil, 2 hydrology, and 2 GIS. I would have a difficult time paying the exorbitant price for C3d knowing that Autodesk is dropping support for LDT. I would also think twice about implementing Bentley if your CAD technicians aren't 100% on board with the switch.

Assuming you ran Carlson on the intellicad engine I would suggest looking in to running it over AutoCAD 2009. I think you will find that it is significantly better than LDT and far easier to use than civil 3d. We use IntelliCAD, it is alright but I would prefer using the AutoCAD engine if I could... Money is tight and the added cost isn't an option for us at this time although Carlson Civil Suite with AutoCAD 2009 is still half the price of C3d.