Civil 3D 2007 Issues

[Anonymous]

First off let me just say, this isn't a rant and I'm not directing any ill
feelings toward Dave, Dan, or any of the others there in the Civil group. I
know you guys are giving it all you have. You all take the time to do the
webcasts on Fridays and you're on here answering questions when you can. So
many props to you guys.

I am disapointed with the software though. The way things have been make me
wonder if someone on high said we gotta have this out by this date, make it
so. Not cool for us at all. We just sunk $40k on subscription this year and
last year it was $30k. We're using the software for some things and in some
cases it has made it easier. I finished a project a few weeks ago that
normally with LDT would have taken 60 hrs. I did it in Civ3D in just 20hrs.
So yeah we saved time and made some money there.

So now we have 2007. Me and another guy installed it here in the office to
beat on it for a while. Within about 2 days of installing it, I'm now alone
in having it on my machine. My coworker got fed up with the grading crashes
and fatal errors. So I started on this project with it. 150,000 sq ft
building pad plus parking lots. I laid out a pretty simple pad nothing too
crazy with it. Set my elevations the same across the pad to start with.
Grading worked ok. Little slow but I figure my laptop isn't top notch, so
its ok. Well now to fine tune things I started trying to change elevations
at the different points. This took forever. Soon as you changed an elevation
you had to wait for it redo the grading. It would finally just die, fatal
erroring or something. Many expletitives were pronounced.

Time to try something new, so I came it with corridors. Wasn't too
complicated so I could work a few corridors across the stie and probably get
what I needed. This worked for a while. It didn't tie together perfectly but
I got it close enough to get some contours out that I could explode and
manipulate by hand. The drawing crashed a few times doing various things but
I could bring it back up and keep going. Until I decided to run an audit on
the drawing. Big Mistake. Audited the drawing, had it fix the errors it
found, only about a half dozen or so. Saved the drawing and closed it.
Reopened it. Fatal Error. Recover. Fatal Error. Open new drawing, insert old
drawing into it. It worked. Zoom Extents......ummm, where's my profiles.
Look in Prospector....umm, where's my surfaces! The only thing I had left in
there were the assemblies. All the other C3D objects had packed up and
vacated the dwg. I can't handle this kind of stuff guys. I'm going gray as
it is. I don't need the help to go all white.

I know you guys are probably working on things. I have no ideas how many
CERs I've sent over the last few days. Just give a little heads up to let us
know what's going on is all I'm asking.

Thanks,
Shawn Caldwell
CAD Manager (aka jack of all trades)
Anderson & Associates, Inc.

[Anonymous]

GREAT synopsis. Exactly what I have been living for the last three versions.
Expect someone to chime in with something like, "Are you sure you weren't
trying to Save right after drawing a line? Oh, yeah, that is how YOU screwed
up the program."
Does anyone understand what "production" design is? Don't you think it is
irresponsible to advertise this as something great, instead of something
that in the future will be really cool?
All AutoDesk would need to do to fix this potential mutiny is to come out
with a very public statement telling everyone that this is a work in
progress. It is NOT a solution. Quit damaging your reputation with that type
of claim. I know you guys who play with this every day understand it is a
WIP, but you should hear what my reseller tries to tell us. They just act
like it is user error. Bad idea. People know they shouldn't have these
problems and telling them that they didn't Save right, or they should'nt
have attempted to paste something just insults their intelligence.
Tim


"Shawn" wrote in message
news:5175348@discussion.autodesk.com...
First off let me just say, this isn't a rant and I'm not directing any ill
feelings toward Dave, Dan, or any of the others there in the Civil group. I
know you guys are giving it all you have. You all take the time to do the
webcasts on Fridays and you're on here answering questions when you can. So
many props to you guys.

I am disapointed with the software though. The way things have been make me
wonder if someone on high said we gotta have this out by this date, make it
so. Not cool for us at all. We just sunk $40k on subscription this year and
last year it was $30k. We're using the software for some things and in some
cases it has made it easier. I finished a project a few weeks ago that
normally with LDT would have taken 60 hrs. I did it in Civ3D in just 20hrs.
So yeah we saved time and made some money there.

So now we have 2007. Me and another guy installed it here in the office to
beat on it for a while. Within about 2 days of installing it, I'm now alone
in having it on my machine. My coworker got fed up with the grading crashes
and fatal errors. So I started on this project with it. 150,000 sq ft
building pad plus parking lots. I laid out a pretty simple pad nothing too
crazy with it. Set my elevations the same across the pad to start with.
Grading worked ok. Little slow but I figure my laptop isn't top notch, so
its ok. Well now to fine tune things I started trying to change elevations
at the different points. This took forever. Soon as you changed an elevation
you had to wait for it redo the grading. It would finally just die, fatal
erroring or something. Many expletitives were pronounced.

Time to try something new, so I came it with corridors. Wasn't too
complicated so I could work a few corridors across the stie and probably get
what I needed. This worked for a while. It didn't tie together perfectly but
I got it close enough to get some contours out that I could explode and
manipulate by hand. The drawing crashed a few times doing various things but
I could bring it back up and keep going. Until I decided to run an audit on
the drawing. Big Mistake. Audited the drawing, had it fix the errors it
found, only about a half dozen or so. Saved the drawing and closed it.
Reopened it. Fatal Error. Recover. Fatal Error. Open new drawing, insert old
drawing into it. It worked. Zoom Extents......ummm, where's my profiles.
Look in Prospector....umm, where's my surfaces! The only thing I had left in
there were the assemblies. All the other C3D objects had packed up and
vacated the dwg. I can't handle this kind of stuff guys. I'm going gray as
it is. I don't need the help to go all white.

I know you guys are probably working on things. I have no ideas how many
CERs I've sent over the last few days. Just give a little heads up to let us
know what's going on is all I'm asking.

Thanks,
Shawn Caldwell
CAD Manager (aka jack of all trades)
Anderson & Associates, Inc.