A couple weeks ago, we told you about Autodesk’s plans to retire Land Desktop and to release a trimmed down verion of Civil 3D. On Friday, they went live with a few pages on their website with more info. Link after the jump.

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To piggyback on something James said, and to set the record straight for quite a few VERY disgruntled LDT users today…

If you have LDT, Civil Design, and Survey on subscription, you will ONLY receive LDT 2008 in the mail.    Civil Design and Survey are no longer subscription items.   The only way you can receive those two programs is to upgrade your LDT license to Civil 3D.   Then, your package will come with 2 DVD’s - one for C3D, and one for LDT, Civil Design Companion, and Survey companion (yes, they’re all on the same DVD now.)

If this makes you unhappy, call your reseller.   There are some incredible prices and incentives for upgrading your license to Civil 3D (I’m not quoting pricing here, but it’s pretty close to what you pay for subscription)  

As James said, see the writing on the wall.   Get on the bus while it’s still at the station, because it’s going to cost to get you on board later in the journey.

A while back, I wrote an article about a program developed to assist surveyors with writing legal descriptions. LegalWorks is a program written by Terry Dotson of DotSoft. It’s a great program, easy to use, and pays for itself with the first legal description that you create with it. Well, I received an email recently from Terry letting me know that the program had been updated. It sat in my inbox for a while until I finally got around to updating the program. Now, I’ve been showing this to clients this week, and they’re simply amazed at what the program can do (look for a purchase soon, Terry….) However, I wish I’d had the update earlier this week (I know, I know, I had it, just being a procrastinator.) Here’s why the new version is so cool - click more to find out…

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I’ve owed this conversation to one of my students in San Diego for a few weeks now- and since we are on a roll with our Point/CounterPoint discussions- why not this one?

Survey is built into Civil3D now, but is it really a solution that our purely survey and mapping clients can sink their teeth into?  Who has tried it?  What are the alternatives?

So- I need some Devils, their Advocates and otherwise to pipe in with their experiences, successes, heartaches and opinions… (this means you EMU and JR!)

 

 

Today, on the POB Message Board, a gentleman named Danny Wilson asked about downloading a HP48GX data collector with TDS software to Civil 3D. I can understand the question, as I’ve had to answer it before, and feel like our HP users are being left out in the cold…

Luckily, R.K. McSwain was on hand to point Mr. Wilson to a previous post of mine regarding this subject. Unfortunately, someone really misunderstood the question, and seemed to disagree with my article. Please allow me to explain…I’d do it there, but don’t want to sign up for a yet another membership to forget.  (For what it’s worth, I found this on our referrer stats.   As of 12:16 AM Eastern Time, 55 people had visited from that link, so I can see that there’s some real interest in this subject.)
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Thanks to all our readers here who attended AUGI CAD Camp in Birmingham, AL this past Tuesday. I got some really good feedback from some of our attendees, and did an informal poll during my first presentation that leads me to believe two things - first of all, we have some very interested readers. That excites me. Secondly, there are quite a few people already using Civil 3D in production, and a lot more that are interested in it. I got to hang out with some great people, answered a lot of questions, and learned some things while I was there. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the most boring and lengthy jobs that a surveyor can do is writing legal descriptions. Legal descriptions are the bane of the surveyor’s existence. If you were to ask for a legal description on a particular parcel definition from 20 different surveyors, they would all look different. Each surveyor has his or her own way that they want the legal to read. The same information is there, but the phrasing is different everywhere. To date, there has been no really good way to automate the writing of legal descriptions. LandXML Reporting does a fair job, but editing the XSL style sheets is difficult at best, and requires a working knowledge of the XML language. So far, I’ve never found a really, really good legal description writer. However, that changed over the weekend.

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I’ve been proven wrong twice today…

I was contacted yesterday by a user, Keith Kempker, about whether Land Desktop could be run in MDI mode (Multiple Document Interface). Well, no, it never has been able to, why now? Well, it seems as if there is a option on the System tab of Options in Land Desktop that allows you to run in SDI mode or MDI. I dismissed it as being something in there as a holdover from AutoCAD, but no, it works. I got a report back from him today that said he did, in fact, have multiple drawings and multiple projects open at once. I verified this with James Wedding, who was sitting next to me at the time.

My question was “HOW?” His answer - “Magic”

Anyway, here’s a screen shot so you’ll know where to find it:

Have Fun!