Biggest Failure in C3D adoption?

[Sinc]

I have consistently now seen something that seems to be a very good indicator of whether or not someone will be able to adopt Civil 3D.

With Civil 3D, a critical element is template maintenance. Whenever someone is working on a drawing, and discovers a need for a new style, it is critical that the new style get incorporated into the template. And it appears that the style must be incorporated into the template RIGHT THEN, soon after it's created, or it gets forgotten and never makes it into the template. Similarly, if someone notices a problem with the settings in the template, then the problem must be fixed in the template. If the user simply fixes the problem in the drawing, then the problem stays in the template, and the user must constantly perform the same fix in new drawings.

I have noticed that some people have a hard time making changes to their drawing template. They almost always say "I don't have time." But quite to the contrary, you do not have time to ignore your template. Getting your template into a good state is critical to being able to work quickly with Civil 3D.

So it seems to me now that there is one indicator, above all others, that gives you a good idea on how successful a given person will be with using Civil 3D. If that person says "I don't have time to worry about my template", then that person will probably be one of those who gets fed up with Civil 3D, and will have a very difficult (or impossible) time trying to adopt Civil 3D.

At least, this is the case with smaller companies, especially the one-man shops. With larger companies, it gets a bit more convoluted, because it may not be a good idea to have everyone making changes to the template. So an official system of getting new styles and fixed styles into the template becomes mandatory. And then this system MUST BE USED. If not, chances of the company as a whole making efficient use of Civil 3D go down dramatically.

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

[Anonymous]

You tell them Sinc. That is one of my biggest peeves about this industry. "I don't have time or I was in a hurry", waa!!, waa!!, waa!!. If you spend a minute to do it right the first time, someone else doesn't spend an hour fixing the problem down the road. Companies want designers to be as close as 100% billable and not spend time on standards and such, since this is non-billable. They always want things NOW, well if you spend time to set things up properly first, then you save the time down the road. Not productive, oh well, can't will. "We'll take care of it when things slow down", yeah right!.

[Anonymous]

I agree. I've spent a lot of time, and continue to spend a lot of time on our C3D template. I actually have three templates I manage, Vanilla AutoCAD, C3D, and C3D Survey. Some changes will require the same change to be made across all three to keep them uniform. But I believe keeping up with the templates is just a no brainer. I've seen an error occur in templates, and if it's not caught in time it seriously hinders production further down the road. Your template is your baby...your salvation, be intimate with it and it will save you hours and hours of headaches!

Brent Daley
Civil Designer/CAD Services Manager
The Land Group, Inc.

[Anonymous]

I think that's only part of the real problem. The unwillingness for the
company to change the way they have "always done it" presents the biggest
problem.

--
Lance W.
______________________________
my advice is congruent and factual..

"dei-feif" wrote in message news:6368700@discussion.autodesk.com...
> I have consistently now seen something that seems to be a very good
> indicator of whether or not someone will be able to adopt Civil 3D.
>
> With Civil 3D, a critical element is template maintenance. Whenever
> someone is working on a drawing, and discovers a need for a new style, it
> is critical that the new style get incorporated into the template. And it
> appears that the style must be incorporated into the template RIGHT THEN,
> soon after it's created, or it gets forgotten and never makes it into the
> template. Similarly, if someone notices a problem with the settings in
> the template, then the problem must be fixed in the template. If the user
> simply fixes the problem in the drawing, then the problem stays in the
> template, and the user must constantly perform the same fix in new
> drawings.
>
> I have noticed that some people have a hard time making changes to their
> drawing template. They almost always say "I don't have time." But quite
> to the contrary, you do not have time to ignore your template. Getting
> your template into a good state is critical to being able to work quickly
> with Civil 3D.
>
> So it seems to me now that there is one indicator, above all others, that
> gives you a good idea on how successful a given person will be with using
> Civil 3D. If that person says "I don't have time to worry about my
> template", then that person will probably be one of those who gets fed up
> with Civil 3D, and will have a very difficult (or impossible) time trying
> to adopt Civil 3D.
>
> At least, this is the case with smaller companies, especially the one-man
> shops. With larger companies, it gets a bit more convoluted, because it
> may not be a good idea to have everyone making changes to the template.
> So an official system of getting new styles and fixed styles into the
> template becomes mandatory. And then this system MUST BE USED. If not,
> chances of the company as a whole making efficient use of Civil 3D go down
> dramatically.
>
> -- Sinc
> http://www.ejsurveying.com
> http://www.quuxsoft.com

[klugb]

That's kind of like saying your "done" with your template. It will never be done, it will always evolve over time and change to suit new versions of the software.

It does not have to be a big task. ONCE you have a good base to start from you can manage it pretty easy. I now just keep a list of things to fix/change and do it once a month or so depending on how much there is to do. Pretty manageable in my book.

On a side note, it's kind of entertaining trying to "assume" you know how another user will use your template. I have had more than a few times when I said "I didn't think about doing it like that", usually it's me showing someone a feature they didn't know existed.

Bruce

[andrewpuller3811]

Couldn't agree more.

Only problem, trying to convince management to let you spend time on it sometimes.

"You don't have time to do that."

Usually I try and tell them "10min now or 100 x 10mins later, you decide"

[Anonymous]

Evolve is right. Especially when there is new styles, and objects added every release that you have to go through and set up for your standards.

I usually go through the whole template from beginning to end before each release and based on working with users I know which things are being used, and which aren't, and what things I may need to add. If it's not creating errors then I agree that working on it and making changes every few weeks sounds like a reasonable thing to do. If your management is frowning on that, then they truly don't understand how important the template is to production. Educate them.

Brent Daley
Civil Designer/CAD Services Manager
The Land Group, Inc.

[Anonymous]

We have one person here who has decided not to follow procedures. That person feels the procedures take away from personal choice and freedom. When they find they can't get the program to work properly or the drawing is messed up, we can't help them. This person refuses to talk to those of us setting things up about what they want set up. We have long since given up trying to reason with this person. I doubt they will be working here too much longer.

[auzzie2776]

waa ! waa ! waa !. i love it, now thats funny, i needed a good laugh. how hard is it to drag the style into the template, it takes 2 seconds. Perhaps a feature for the future, that if the template folder is configured, a button will become active and just before your done in the style editor , click the button and it will copy that style to the template. and your done, the template is updated and everybody is hapy

otherwise excellent topic.

[Sinc]

> {quote:title=auzzie2776 wrote:}{quote}
> waa ! waa ! waa !. i love it, now thats funny, i needed a good laugh. how hard is it to drag the style into the template, it takes 2 seconds. Perhaps a feature for the future, that if the template folder is configured, a button will become active and just before your done in the style editor , click the button and it will copy that style to the template. and your done, the template is updated and everybody is hapy

Hey! Great idea! With all the recent Style Management additions to the Sincpac-C3D, I think we can come up with something that will watch a drawing for new/edited Styles, and then give you the option to dump them all to the template. That is, assuming there is some event we can watch, which will tell us when the user edits or creates a Style.

I'll look into it, and see if we can get that added into the next release.

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

[Anonymous]

Good luck with that. Seems you need an act from God to do that these days. At a previous job, there was a person who drew the line and inserted an arrow block (not custom block) for his leaders. People tried teaching him how the dimension styles worked but he didn’t want to adjust. Nobody liked working on the drawings he touched but the company never made a move to get rid of him. At my last job, where I thought I had seniority here in Phoenix, a designer took a 6 hour task and turned it into a 3 day task, and when it came to a lay-offs, I am the one that gets laid off. Not trying to throw in the race card here but since he was white and I wasn’t. Hummmmm!!!!!!!!!!!! Makes you wonder.

[mspatz]

AMEN...

If I could make a religion out of "10min now or 100 x 10mins later" I would. Look at it this way. The mindset of people that say "I don't have time" allows the rest of us that make time exel!

mspatz

[Anonymous]

Management always has their pets. One guy that used to work here (he left on his own) told management I had no idea what I was doing. One manager believed him. Luckily the other manager realized I was the one fixing all his mistakes and told the other to back off. Once I went on maternity leave they really clued in to how much I do. The one manager still wants me gone, and continues trying to set me up to fail. I may only be a tec, but I am smart enough to cover my but. If I can hang in for a few more years he will retire.
Its hard to believe race or sex are factors in todays world. Apparently we haven't evolved as much as some think.
(by the way...... I have been told I am the "token female" for the office)

[Anonymous]

Yeah, I know of the token status label in the office. I like you, have heard thru the grapevine how things don’t get accomplished when I am not there as to when I am. But I still got no backing when I tried to implement CAD uniformity and consistency in the office. My department head chastised me for an hour one morning because he couldn’t create a pdf the previous night after I had gone home and the other two white designers who where there, couldn’t help him. Glad I am not there anymore.

[Anonymous]

Lance, I agree. My company brought me on thinking they wanted to venture down the path of moving to Civil 3d. To give you an idea of where they were, they were only using Autocad (not even LDT), drawing profiles by hand in paperspace of a sheet, and, doing things like scaling their sheet border xrefs. Very very old school...

So, I came along and after figuring this out through them not wanting to change their old school ways, I told them to not implement Civil 3d here. We are only 7 people total anyways, but they will just not change their ways. So, even things like batchplotting using page setup overides is a major pain in that I have to have one for each scale of a sheet, ect...

Powers-that-be in some companies just don't get it when it comes to software and how to truely use it efficiently. Some see how much time/effort it will take to get to that point and just don't want to front that kind of cost.

...so, gone from the days of designing in Civil 3d.....just a Vanilla Autocad user left supporting a couple of Old Schoolers.