by emorse4487 » Sun Dec 27, 2009 7:51 pm
Using Carlson Civil Suite with IntelliCAD in conjunction with LDD is something I would highly discourage doing.
We switched over from LDD to Carlson 2009 and the transition was not as clean as it should have been. This was partly based on the crying from our technicians who didn't want to learn new software, but also because of incompatible objects between programs.
Opening LDD projects in Carlson 2009 (has not changed with 2010) caused ALL of our viewports to get screwed up as IntelliCAD does not allow for "irregular" viewports. These viewport objects do not revert back to their original format when opened in AutoCAD; that was a huge issue with one of our road projects with a large series of sheets.
We switched from LDD3 which utilized 2002 dwg format. People would save over these original drawings in the 2007 format that IntelliCAD uses and subsequently could not be opened in the older version of AutoCAD. Saving back was possible but it was a real nightmare, primarily because AutoCAD refuses to recognize design files from other programs. For instance, if you design a roadway centerline in Carlson, LDD will not recognize it as such so you have to redefine all of your work. If your office is up to date with their Autodesk subscription then you will have to worry about the conversion between 2009 dwg format with IntelliCAD's 2007 format.
There are a TON of issues that I had with the transition, and I would really hate to deal with these problems on a regular basis by working between programs. Now that all of our projects are created exclusively with Carlson my life has become much more enjoyable.
Carlson allows you to commute network licenses so there is no additional cost to your employer for letting you work at home. See if you can get them to buy you a Carlson license for your office, then you can just commute the license when you work at home. Problem solved. If you have any specific questions let me know via PM and I will try to answer them in a timely fashion.
ON SECOND THOUGHT:
Seeing as how you are simply creating points and exporting .txt/ascii files to data collectors for stakeout you probably won't have the same issues that we had. As long as the drawings you are creating are to be used exclusively by you for pointing up drawings you won't have too many problems. You will have to re-import points from carlson into LDD but other than that you might be good to go.
Eric J. Morse, P.E.
MEC Industries, LLC