Anybody Else Underimpressed with C3D 2011?

[jmatthei]

So I eagerly read the release notes for Civil 3D 2011 and the comparison matrix at Imaginit, and...

...there doesn't seem to be much of any substance that's new. Which would be fine, if the key functionality holes have been filled like water mains, subgrade surfaces, or a good way to manage detail callouts. Instead they're ignoring these key points and wasting their energy on trivial improvements to corridor design. Trust me - I need basic water main functionality before I need a productivity improvement to make storm sewer layout 1% faster. Perhaps the 64-bit structure will speed things up a bit, but please Autodesk - finish filling out the core features before you spend enormous effort on these tweaks.

I'm really not sure it's worth installing the upgrade.

[Anonymous]

Personally, I would consider myself foolish not to upgrade to the 64 bit
version & insure I was using Win 7 64.

--
John Mayo, PE

Core i7 920 6GB DDR3
Radeon 4870HD 1 GB
Vista64

[CRThorn]

I can see where your coming from the additional features are the same as the subscription pack plus a few tweaks.

The big thing here is the 64bit. From my basic understanding going 64bit isn't a little bit of code tweaking it's almost a full blow re-write of the core code so there is a good chance they didn't have time to make some deep changes so they made some more minor change which won't effect the core code.

I think this will be one of the best releases performance increase wise if you have the hardware and OS. The proof is still to come though.

What I really want to know is file compatibility! Will a 2011 Civil 3D file run in 2010?


Chris

[Anonymous]

C3D has never been backward compatible. This will be the same in 2011.

--
John Mayo, PE

Core i7 920 6GB DDR3
Radeon 4870HD 1 GB
Vista64

[Anonymous]

How are the Grading objects behaving up there?

pitifully sorry to be still on 2008 😞

Joe

[Anonymous]

Joe you ever get a chance to look into that DB I did?

"Joe Bouza" wrote in message
news:6361591@discussion.autodesk.com...
How are the Grading objects behaving up there?

pitifully sorry to be still on 2008 😞

Joe

[BrianHailey]

Joe,

According to the blogger day webcast, there is no new functionality in the grading tools however, they claim to have found and fixed some of the issues with the grading tools. Based on their track record (of every release being better then the previous one in this area), I would say there's a good chance of it being better.

My first class at AU I did on the grading tools using 2008. Most of my comments were along the lines of, "You sure are brave to show off grading in 2008!" I feel for you, I really do.

Brian Hailey
http://www.cad-1.com
http://www.AtYourDeskTraining.com
http://Civil3DPlus.wordpress.com

[Anonymous]

I just started looking that literature on C3D 2011 and see they finally went
64 bit. GREAT! Did they get to my second request, multi-threading C3D?

Brad
C3D 2010 on Vista Business 64 SP 2
LT 2010 on XP Pro SP 3

wrote in message news:6361646@discussion.autodesk.com...
Joe,

According to the blogger day webcast, there is no new functionality in the
grading tools however, they claim to have found and fixed some of the issues
with the grading tools. Based on their track record (of every release being
better then the previous one in this area), I would say there's a good
chance of it being better.

My first class at AU I did on the grading tools using 2008. Most of my
comments were along the lines of, "You sure are brave to show off grading in
2008!" I feel for you, I really do.

Brian Hailey
http://www.cad-1.com
http://www.AtYourDeskTraining.com
http://Civil3DPlus.wordpress.com

[Anonymous]

No. At least not much of it that I know of. I suspect that won't happen
for a while, at least not full-blown.

--
Matt Kolberg
Global CADD Systems - A division of Cansel

"Brad" wrote in message
news:6361673@discussion.autodesk.com...
> I just started looking that literature on C3D 2011 and see they finally
> went 64 bit. GREAT! Did they get to my second request, multi-threading
> C3D?
>
> Brad
> C3D 2010 on Vista Business 64 SP 2
> LT 2010 on XP Pro SP 3

[Anonymous]

[... I'm really not sure it's worth installing the upgrade...]
So you're going to spite Autodesk by not installing 2011 and deny yourself
of the new features that are useful simply because there aren't enough of
them?

You're underimpressed? Really? Have you installed it? Have you seen the
grading stability? Have you seen performance increases? Have you
experienced stability improvements?

These things more than make up for any perceived lack of features for many
people. I'm not saying at all that your opinion is flawed in any way, I'm
just stating that this post perfectly states that you can't please everyone.
There have been many posts that say "Forget the new features and give me
something more stable." and other posts like yours. Nobody is right. You
can't please everyone. Now if after you've tried it for a while and you're
still unimpressed then so be it. Give it a chance before you dismiss it
altogether.

--
Matt Kolberg
Global CADD Systems - A division of Cansel

[Civil3DReminders_com]

I think its more got to do with what portion of the industry you work in. If you do a lot of transportation projects then you are happy, but land development not so much. It sounds like I'm in your same boat in thinking that they didn't add much in the work I do. I would disagree the UI changes in the corridor design are trivial. If you do work with corridors its going to save you a ton of time not having to go back and forth between the corridor properties.

I also agree that the pipes need a major overhaul. But overall it sounds like they have taken into account some customers concerns of product stability and it sounds like they spent some time on this, but only time will tell once people start using it for production.

Christopher

[Anonymous]

Joe,

I agree with the other here. I think gradings will be better. I am really
hoping that the need for exploding is not sp great.

I need the stability. I have Vista 64 at work & I need to shut down 10 - 20
times a day to get the ribbon working after it bombs out. We still have
crashes with FLines & gradings.

At home with Win 7 64, I can keep the C3D open all day long doing all of the
grading that crashes me at work using same the files.

A 64 bit application is very good news to me.


--



--
John Mayo, PE

Core i7 920 6GB DDR3
Radeon 4870HD 1 GB
Vista64

[Sinc]

And Parcels still need a major overhaul, and the Survey Database needs a major overhaul (or replacement), and the API is still swiss cheese, and...

There's a lot of things that need to be done. But it seems to be getting better. The performance improvements in C3D 2011 will probably make it run better than C3D 2010 even on XP x86 systems.

Part of why you may be disappointed may be due to the one-year development cycle... By the time they finish shipping one version, they're already halfway to beta on the next version. Not much time to introduce significant changes. And while I think we'll like the new Corridor improvements, the new feature that has us most excited is probably the smallest one, and one that should have been in the very first release of Civil 3D (the ability to use delimiters to group digits in large numbers)...

On the flip side, since a lot of people will probably see this version as primarily a stability and performance enhancement release, it should hopefully be comparatively easy to migrate to 2011... There should be relatively little to relearn, and not many general processes or workflows that have to be reworked, hopefully with relatively few new bugs to discover...

-- Sinc
http://www.ejsurveying.com
http://www.quuxsoft.com

[tmullins]

>>By the time they finish shipping one version, they're already halfway to beta on the next version...


And therein lies the problem that by the looks of things is not high on the list to address anytime soon.

This is precisely why it is impractical to upgrade every spring to the latest version. Unless you don't mind not being able to share drawings with clients or having to dumb them down in order for them to read them. And please no one suggest exporting the smarts out to XML along with the linework. I might do that once or twice, but for every client not using the latest version I wouldn't even think of it.

Take a poll here of how many clients not firms that are actually even using 2010 let alone will be moving to 2011 in the next 2-3 months. I had someone suggest one time that it is our (AE firms) "duty" to encourage clients to upgrade to the latest release. Sorry, it's not my job to tell the ones who are paying our bills what to do, and as if I (or you) have that much pull with municipalites or whomever we're working with.

I definitely welcome the new features and I'm glad to see the product evolve but the issue of backwards compatibilty needs to be addressed.

[rl_jackson]

I would have to agree the lack of backwards compatibility for year to year sucks. Didn't Microsoft get in trouble with the EU for just that same thing when they released Office 2007.

[tony1978]

I will have to agree with Chris. 2011 is a major plus if you are doing lots of street design but not so much for small commercial sites. I do like some of the new pipe features but they still need more features. In addition, we need more improvements in parcels. I do like that the grading groups is more stable. I wish they could link parcels and strom structure together.

Tony
[Tony's Civil 3D World|http://tonyscivil3dworld.blogspot.com]

[Sinc]

> {quote:title=tmullins wrote:}{quote}
> >>By the time they finish shipping one version, they're already halfway to beta on the next version...
> Take a poll here of how many clients not firms that are actually even using 2010 let alone will be moving to 2011 in the next 2-3 months. I had someone suggest one time that it is our (AE firms) "duty" to encourage clients to upgrade to the latest release. Sorry, it's not my job to tell the ones who are paying our bills what to do, and as if I (or you) have that much pull with municipalites or whomever we're working with.

There was a giant thread at Civil3D.com where almost everyone was pushing for a major release every two years, rather than every year. Hopefully, people at Autodesk are paying attention. When the feedback is THAT lopsided against the yearly incompatible releases, it seems like it should be worth noticing...

We actually just started using 2010 ourselves, and haven't even migrated to the new linework coding system yet. So we still haven't been giving Autodesk much feedback on 2010. That's another problem with their current release cycle... By the time the majority of people are actually using 2010 and reporting problems, they're already halfway done with 2012, and the feedback can't really work its way into the product until 2013. We have a three-year lag for most feedback.

-- Sinc
http://www.ejsurveying.com
http://www.quuxsoft.com

[keithknifer]

The most plausible explanation I've heard from an Autodesk rep. is that since they are a publicly traded company, they are obligated to release a new version every year for stockhholder's interests. Whether there are actual legal reasons or that was just the story to stick to I don't really know. But it sounded like a better reason than I've heard before.

[tmullins]

I don't think any of us have a problem necessarily with a new release every year. like I said earlier I'm glad to see the development of the product as opposed to the lack of development!

I think the real problem again is the compatibility issue. Having to move forward every spring to a new version would never happen at our firm for countless reasons - the main one being client demands. We have some clients using 2009 and have not had any ask for 2010 files yet. So can anyone give me one reason right now why I would upgrade to 2011?

We are on a two-year release cycle here at our firm and I don't see us changing that strategy and by the looks of the responses here we're probably not alone.

[CRThorn]

You say there is a 3 year lag with comments on a yearly release but in fact there would a be 3 year lag on a 2 year release cycle.

Imo there should be 2 types of releases on a cycle, first concetrates on new features and advancements, the second looks a improvements to performance but keep the same file system.

e.g.

2010 junctions, ribbon, etc... and new file type + SAP

2011 64bit, stability few cosmetic enhancements while the same file type as 2010

2012 new features again.... and you keep rolling

2013 Performance and cosmetice enhancements

This way you get a 2 year window to upgrade and before new features are added to get a stable release, it is then the companies choice if to keep going yearly to get the new features off the bat or for for the 2 year release with the stable performance version.