Is C3D ready for prime time

[Anonymous]

My only real experience was with the 2004 beta
My company is a multi dicipline company and we are just starting
up a civil division. I am a long time LDD user, but now working as a cad
admin.
My question is we just got C3D and LDD 2006. Should I concentrate on
training
in C3D and use it for production or stay on LDD which I know well.

--
Dave

[Anonymous]

You're right in one way, you CAN figure this software out if you do the
tutorials. The reason that almost everyone that's done any serious work in
this suggests training is two-fold:
1. ROI. You'll recover the downtime due to software changes much faster than
stumbling through on your own, assuming you actually pay for the hours lost
to fumbling around half-blind.
2. Frustration. C3D is considerably more complex than LDT. Sorry, but it is.
Yes, you can learn it on your own, but I consider it money well-spent to NOT
have my employees going home every day hating their jobs.

--
James Wedding, P.E.
Technology Manager &
Associate
Jones & Boyd, Inc.
Dallas, TX
XP/2 on P4-3.4/1G
LDT 2006 & C3D2006/SP1

[Anonymous]

I tend to disagree with the idea that all that is powerful is not easy
to use. Powerful technology is that technology which allows/enables the
PERSON to accomplish more. Not the other way around.

It's important to seperate a system that has a lot of capabilities from
a system that is powerful.

When one focuses purely on output, since the OUTPUT is what you get paid
for, then civil3d is, lacking. It does a great job of making itself
more work (parceling is a perfect example of this) without any way to
recoup/bill for the hours spent jacking around with parcels when you
need to move a lot line 3 feet.

Your average user still has to learn what pieces c3d is good at, and
what c3d is truly terrible at. And it will vary for every company, in
every little subniche that exists. Hence my advice, take project home
and RUN THROUGH THE TRIAL CD. I did, worked out great for us.

And that was with the 2005 version. 2006 is faster, and pipes is neat,
but I wouldn't say that the piping is an order of magnitude improvement
over offseting baselines method of drafting it out. Why? Because we
get really wonderful comments from the cities like, renumber this sewer
upstream to downstream, or renumber this structure system this way, etc,
or whatever. Lot easier to just hand edit the stuff, and much faster in
revision.


apweng wrote:
> As a trainer I can tell you that the investment in training will pay for itself. The technology is very powerful. Powerful technology in the engineering environment is not going to be easy to use - or easy for the average user to get up to speed with.
>
> It's all about getting a return on your investment.

[apweng]

Easy to use...

I guess it depends on the type of project. Take corridors for example. New road designs where there are no design constraints are very simple. In fact I've always stated that C3D is easier to use than LD/CD for these types of projects.

Road reconstruction projects, which are hugely driven by constraints, are not easy to design - regardless if you're doing manual calculations, using LD/CD or C3D.

Still I've been through several of these already and even given evident "holes" in the current technology I would use C3D over LD/CD any day.

The project we're working on now involves resurfacing, full depth reconstruction, sometimes matching existing cross fall, sometimes not, sometimes LHS and sometimes RHS. A difficult design project regardless of how you're doing it.

C3D allows me to efficiently set up and manage the wide range of profile/alignment/assembly data and constraints required for the project - but easy to use in this case - definitely not.

Regards,

Andrew

[jive]

Happy for their success, bu the article for this company is not a good reference or comparison to get people to jump ship and commit their companies money and time to C3d :

ttp://tinyurl.com/bxb2e

They went from Acad14 to c3d....of course its better.....I think what most people are needing to know is how can they make more money and save more time: LDDI OR C3D!!!!

I will not endulge in sharing my personal opinion as most people skill sets, background, scenarios , and styles are different....
observation though:
there are strengths to C3d but it needs a lot of improvements and the kinks worked out, alot of people do not feel they have saved any money or time trying to switch...
Lddi is tried and true, most people I imagine have refined it to suit them best they know how and it is productive, but it would be advantageous to have more integration and dynamic relationships....

ROI & training: I have seen many Execs balk at swicthing to C3d, and with all the indecisiveness, I don't blame them.....will Execs try to fix, upgrade, or implement what is not broken?....with current workloads in my region, No exec wants to AFFORD time, training, lost $$, or lose clients trying to guinea pig SW for a clients project....
That said, I don't always agree with it.....WE NEED C3D to work through the kinks... I WANT the technological edge... and I will try and do what I can to weather this timne period and help out with reporting errors and providing suggestions.....
No matter how much hair I lose......

jive

[Anonymous]

"ROI & training: I have seen many Execs balk at swicthing to C3d, and with
all the indecisiveness, I don't blame them.....will Execs try to fix,
upgrade, or implement what is not broken?....with current workloads in my
region, No exec wants to AFFORD time, training, lost $$, or lose clients
trying to guinea pig SW for a clients project.... "


I think it's time you bought a copy of Guy Kawasaki's book "Art of the
Start" (or maybe use the free one from the last Autodesk event), and sit
down with the "Execs", and study the section entitled "KILL THE CASH COWS".



wrote in message news:4991579@discussion.autodesk.com...
Happy for their success, bu the article for this company is not a good
reference or comparison to get people to jump ship and commit their
companies money and time to C3d :...

[jive]

Arnold, suggesting me to read??? I find that funny in the sense you DIDN'T read or interpret what I wrote:

"That said, I don't always agree with it".....
by the way I call my own shots and don't answer to any Execs, I answer directly to the clients....

It sounded like criticism rather than a suggestion.....one area I think that would be helpful in approving OUR product and deive improvements..........

[apweng]

I agree with your comment on executive "balking" but on the other hand even though there are those that will argue (including myself) that Softdesk on ACAD R12 was great - how many are using it now?

That's where it's up to us as trainers to come up with creative and less obstructive ways to transfer knowledge in a profit oriented environment. I've never been a fan of pulling a group of people out of production for a week and bombard them with information.

So then the execs say we'll train when we're slow - which seems to be never these days - but when you're slow you don't apply learned materials and forget quickly.

Creative ways of training? Project based, bill the trainers time to the job, smaller groups. Enable those internally to spread the wealth. We are in a climate of change. Technologies will always change and corporate philosophies must adapt to learning oriented environments. Idealistic on the large scale? Perhaps, but as a trainer it's worked reasonably well for me so far.

The deal with ROI is that there's a hell of alot of Autodesk shareholders making a hell of a lot of money on our the industry's continuing technological investments.

I work with the industry to help companies realize better returns on these never ending technological expenditures - with the eventual goal of optimization.

Once again, idealistic? Perhaps but if you shoot for the stars you may get to the moon.

Andrew

[jive]

well said...and viable point of view....

[Anonymous]

Hi Doug,

So what's complex about what Microsoft software does? The only comparison
is your level of requirements of the software

Also be honest with your self. Do you even use Word or Excel in anywhere
near the most efficient way?
Do you have anything more than a rudimentary knowledge of their
capabilities?

Think about AutoCAD as being like a motor cycle courier - it's brilliant and
flexible at delivering one parcel at a time.

Civil 3D is intended to be like a rail network which can deliver hundreds of
parcels similtaneously, but it requires that you accept some limitations on
working methods (flexibility) and that you keep the engine and wagons on the
tracks. The first thing ruma did was to drive it off the tracks because he
was used to the motor cycle concept.

Did you need training to be an Engineer - or did you just pick up a software
package which turned you into one?

Could you get meaniningful information from HECRAS if you didn't know
anything about it's input and output?

"Training is for when you want a certain
number of staff to get up to speed properly in a given time."

There are very few orgainisations which don't work on this principle.

--

Laurie Comerford
CADApps
www.cadapps.com.au

"Doug Boys" wrote in message
news:4991231@discussion.autodesk.com...
What's with all this training ? Training is for when you want a certain
number of staff to get up to speed properly in a given time. The software
shouldn't NEED training to be able to get familiar with it and use it
provided you have time to fiddle with it and teach yourself. Most of us
learnt AutoCAD and Word and Excel by ourselves and the "knuckle" approach
(knuckle the keyboard and see what happens). Good software should be able
to stand this sort of treatment. Civil 3D seems to be more difficult to
follow than that and brittle. Pity. Even Bill Gates' products are ready to
come out fighting in MUCH shorter development time than Civil 3D and get up
again when knocked over.

Doug Boys

[Anonymous]

Well said.

It is easy to be devil's advocate in these groups. These comments all have
their own merit in different scenarios.

It is often the little things in this program that will irritate most users.
Often these little things are known by most of the "good" instructors and
can eleminiated thus helping the user to learn and do operations correcty.


"James Wedding" wrote in message
news:4991512@discussion.autodesk.com...
You're right in one way, you CAN figure this software out if you do the
tutorials. The reason that almost everyone that's done any serious work in
this suggests training is two-fold:
1. ROI. You'll recover the downtime due to software changes much faster than
stumbling through on your own, assuming you actually pay for the hours lost
to fumbling around half-blind.
2. Frustration. C3D is considerably more complex than LDT. Sorry, but it is.
Yes, you can learn it on your own, but I consider it money well-spent to NOT
have my employees going home every day hating their jobs.

--
James Wedding, P.E.
Technology Manager &
Associate
Jones & Boyd, Inc.
Dallas, TX
XP/2 on P4-3.4/1G
LDT 2006 & C3D2006/SP1

[Anonymous]

Agent is the best newsreader aviable. Its not a feature lacking
its autodesk screwing up its servers so that agent cannot work with
the autodesk servers.

And no thankx, I don't want another newsreader, I just want agent.

--
Dave


"Himanshu Gohel" wrote in message
news:4986217@discussion.autodesk.com...
David Allen wrote:
> I will when Autodesk lets me go back to Agent.
> I had to setup OE to access the newsgroups
> I hate OE

If Agent lacks necessary features to allow you to access our news
server, you can try Thunderbird

http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/

--
Himanshu Gohel. Civil3D Team, Autodesk, Inc.
Autodesk Civil3D Product Information: http://www.autodesk.com/civil3d

[Anonymous]

Back in May or so autodesk changed how their news servers
ever since agent cannot download headers properly.

--
Dave


"James Wedding" wrote in message
news:4986248@discussion.autodesk.com...
There are a fair number of Agent users in here. I'm not among them, but I do
know some.

What's your beef?

--
James Wedding, P.E.
Technology Manager &
Associate
Jones & Boyd, Inc.
Dallas, TX
XP/2 on P4-3.4/1G
LDT 2006 & C3D2006/SP1

[Anonymous]

Just checked with Matt Stachoni, he's using Agent 2.0 with only minor
problems. Maybe you could post in CM asking him for some assistance?

--
James Wedding, P.E.
Technology Manager &
Associate
Jones & Boyd, Inc.
Dallas, TX
XP/2 on P4-3.4/1G
LDT 2006 & C3D2006/SP1

[Anonymous]

You're right Laurie. I apologise. I accept your comment that Civil 3D is
aimed at heavy-duty industrial production.

I am doing a 3-day course with Rad at present and it is a great help. But I
think there will be many features still that I will have to learn about by
myself.

No, I don't use Word and Excel to their full capability. But all the
features are in there somewhere (and I can often find them when needed) and
it is very difficult to make Word or Excel crash. I am yet to be convinced
of that with Civil 3D (but the 2006 version is better).

Doug Boys