Timeframe for Style Creation

[Anonymous]

Our firm is currently trying to get C3D implemented. We have a reseller that tells us that - " We expect to be able to deliver a complete style template for you, spending 3 days on them. This includes testing and some refining after your evaluation." -
This seems a bit unrealistic from what I know and hear about template creation. I have spent about 8 cumulative days on the template since my training and seem to still be a good bit away from having a finished template. Does anybody have an estimate of how long this should actually take. $5000 for three days of consultancy seems high. Can you possibly customize all of your styles in 24 hours? I started with the NCS extended and went from there.

[johngordon6189]

My firm has not implemented C3D yet, but based on my previous experience of setting up regualr autocad templates, I would say the timeframe is short for C3D setup given the need to create figure prefixes and styles with the layers in the base drawing. $5K for 3 days worth of work (roughly $209/hour) is a bit much in my opinion as well. I estimate that my reseller's "consultation rate" is about $140 an hour.

[Anonymous]

Generally, the implementers for any reseller have been doing the job long enough, that they know how to crank out the styles pretty quickly.
Another way they may cut the time down is by using a standard template they may have already developed for their in-house use, which may just get a few tweaks here and there depending on your companies needs.
Plus, they will likely have several people working on the styles at once.
3 days seems about right, for a reseller that has been implementing since 2005/2006.

[Anonymous]

When i did that exact type of consulting in 2006 and 2007, I charged $1400 a day. So thats within reason.

You might try to whittle down the price, a little bit of negotiation never hurts. They might bite on a little bit less especially if they are currently slow.

[Sinc]

We've been using C3D for two years now, and we're still working on our styles.

-- Sinc
http://www.ejsurveying.com
http://www.quux.biz
http://www.sincpac3d.com

[Anonymous]

Yeah, I concur with Sinc. Your template will continue to evolve for years to come. What you should be thinking about, is getting a base template that the team can be off and running with and weather or not 3 days of consultants time is gonna save you X weeks of your overhead and lack of production. If you hire the consultant, and want to get the most out of it, you will need to be very involved in that process as well.

[Anonymous]

I know we are new to Civil 3D, but three days seems way low. It took us three days to test out whether to set our styles to control "bystyle" or "bylayer". There are several post explaining the pro's and con's of both methods.

The short time span doesn't look right if you are trying to customize for a particular companies layer and CAD standards. If you stick close to one of the "NCS" templates then it would go quick, it just didn't fit our needs.

[Anonymous]

I did ours and I'd say it took me about 3-4 days to get ours to about 85%
using the NCS. There is still quite a bit of tweaking for text styles,
visibility, that sort of thing. You will not really know how far along you
are until you start using them on the first project though. We knew how we
wanted everything to look but sometimes for whatever reason the final
product just doesn't really work so you have to tweak the styles again. Not
to mention there are certain things that just don't behave like they should
or at least like you think they should.

A good consultant can probably save you time and money initially but I think
the lessons learned doing them for a CAD Manager type are invaluable for the
maintenance of existing and creation of new styles. I don't feel that the
initial creation is really the BIG deal with styles since you'll be tweaking
them almost immediately.

"a battle plan never survives first contact with the enemy".

--

Lance White
CAD Manager

Windows XP PRO (All updates before SP 3)
2008; (All SP) LDT, MAP 3D
2009; Civil 3D, Map 3D, Raster

"CivilMike" wrote in message news:5993368@discussion.autodesk.com...
> Our firm is currently trying to get C3D implemented. We have a reseller
> that tells us that - " We expect to be able to deliver a complete style
> template for you, spending 3 days on them. This includes testing and some
> refining after your evaluation." -
> This seems a bit unrealistic from what I know and hear about template
> creation. I have spent about 8 cumulative days on the template since my
> training and seem to still be a good bit away from having a finished
> template. Does anybody have an estimate of how long this should actually
> take. $5000 for three days of consultancy seems high. Can you possibly
> customize all of your styles in 24 hours? I started with the NCS extended
> and went from there.

[Anonymous]

Mike,
We typically spend a couple of days on this process, creating what we
consider a "Starter" template. Anyone that tells you they're doing much
more than making a launch point is a bit insane. As you've seen from all
the comments here, you'll have to do more with every job probably.

--
James Wedding, P.E.
Engineered Efficiency, Inc.
The Site: www.eng-eff.com
The Blog: www.civil3d.com
The Book: www.masteringcivil3d.com
C3D 08SP2/09 Mac Book Pro, XP SP2, 4GB

[Sinc]

$1400/day? I must be in the wrong line of work. 🙂

-- Sinc
http://www.ejsurveying.com
http://www.quux.biz
http://www.sincpac3d.com

[Anonymous]

from what i've seen you'd be pretty good at it too. the only problem is you have to support the darn product too which is another bunch of fun and games.

[Anonymous]

As James has mentioned this is jest a basic styles template to get you started, 3 days is correct for a basic template and $1400 a day would be reasonable (everything is negotiable).

You will be constantly be finding ways to add more styles as you go along and realize the capabilities of the software. It is in constant evolution.

I use to work for a reseller and as mentioned they do this all the time and know a lot of shortcuts to the process.

[Sinc]

I'd probably feel guilty, charging $1400/day for something as piddling as style setup, though. It seems strange that people expect to pay less than $400/day for things like custom subassembly creation, but for something that is so much easier and less-valuable, they pay $1400/day...

I guess I still have a lot to learn about this industry. 🙂

-- Sinc
http://ejsurveying.com
http://www.quux.biz
http://sincpac3d.com

[Anonymous]

Hi Sinc,

Creating styles requires major user input from the client.

For a skilled style creator, the style creation probably would only take
5 to 10% of the time it takes to get the client to understand what you
are doing and why, and then to tell you what they need.

If I was doing commercially, I would set up a spreadsheet definition
process for the client to complete and then create the styles with code
from the spreadsheet.

I would expect the actual creation time to approach 30 seconds, but the
overhead would be measured in days. So the real item of interest is how
much the finished template is to cost - regardless of time to create.

$1400 a day is not unreasonable for exercising high levels of skill and
using your own automation tools. My nephew charges $350/hr for his
accounting skills. My daughter writes spreadsheets which sell to the
poorer clients for between $30,000 and $50,000 and for the moneyed ones
up to $500,000

Regards

Laurie

sinc wrote:
> I'd probably feel guilty, charging $1400/day for something as piddling as style setup, though. It seems strange that people expect to pay less than $400/day for things like custom subassembly creation, but for something that is so much easier and less-valuable, they pay $1400/day...
>
> I guess I still have a lot to learn about this industry. 🙂
>
> -- Sinc
> http://ejsurveying.com
> http://www.quux.biz
> http://sincpac3d.com

[Sinc]

So what you're saying is that the people who say custom subassembly creation is not even worth $400/day are the ones who are dreadfully wrong?

If only Autodesk would improve styles. They should not take anywhere near this much time to create or maintain. Methinks the developers at Autodesk could learn a lot if they studied Cascading Style Sheets, and thought about how those principles could be applied to Civil-3D to create a system that is much easier and faster to manage.

But if people are really making that much money from creating an initial set of styles for new C3D users, I can see why there's little incentive to make styles better...

-- Sinc
http://www.ejsurveying.com
http://www.quux.biz
http://www.sincpac3d.com

[Anonymous]

Sinc, where are you getting $400/day for custom subassemblies? That's only
$50/hour. That's dirt cheap. Any developer I've seen charges way more than
that. I have done some LISP/VBA work as well. Even a simple routine will
take a few hours. Even at $100 per hour, which is very reasonable, people
just don't want to spend $300-400 for something that seems like a simple
routine.

Another way to look at it is this. A company might use that subassembly
occasionally. They will use the DWT every day, all day, for every user.
It's about worth. I think most people would say that an entire DWT is worth
far more than a single cutom subassembly.

--
Matt Kolberg
Global CADD Systems
www.gcscorp.ca


wrote in message news:5994355@discussion.autodesk.com...
So what you're saying is that the people who say custom subassembly creation
is not even worth $400/day are the ones who are dreadfully wrong?

If only Autodesk would improve styles. They should not take anywhere near
this much time to create or maintain. Methinks the developers at Autodesk
could learn a lot if they studied Cascading Style Sheets, and thought about
how those principles could be applied to Civil-3D to create a system that is
much easier and faster to manage.

But if people are really making that much money from creating an initial set
of styles for new C3D users, I can see why there's little incentive to make
styles better...

-- Sinc
http://www.ejsurveying.com
http://www.quux.biz
http://www.sincpac3d.com

[Sinc]

>> Sinc, where are you getting $400/day for custom subassemblies?


From a highly-regarded member of the community who posts here regularly. I probably shouldn't say any more.

-- Sinc
http://www.ejsurveying.com
http://www.quux.biz
http://www.sincpac3d.com

[Anonymous]

Ok, no problem. Still sounds underpriced to me.

--
Matt Kolberg
Global CADD Systems
www.gcscorp.ca


wrote in message news:5994533@discussion.autodesk.com...
>> Sinc, where are you getting $400/day for custom subassemblies?


From a highly-regarded member of the community who posts here regularly. I
probably shouldn't say any more.

-- Sinc
http://www.ejsurveying.com
http://www.quux.biz
http://www.sincpac3d.com

[Anonymous]

I'll add my two bits.
3 days for styles for a test project is doable.

I agree $1400/day is reasonable for styles and $400/day for custom subassemblies is grossly under valued..

It's not how much time you take to do the jobe that should indicate the value, but all the effort and training that got you to that point. (see below)

There was an engineer who had an exceptional gift for fixing all things mechanical. After serving his company loyally for over 30 years, he happily retired. Several years later the company contacted him regarding a seemingly impossible problem they were having with one of their multi-million dollar machines.
They had tried everything and everyone else to get the machine to work but to no avail. In desperation, they called on the retired engineer who has solved so many of their problems in the past.
The engineer reluctantly took the challenge. He spent a day studying the huge machine. At the end of the day, he marked a small "x" in chalk on a particular component of the machine and stated, "This is where your problem is". The part was replaced and the machine worked perfectly again. The company received a bill for $50,000 from the engineer for this service. They demanded an itemized accounting of his charges.
The engineer responded briefly:
• One chalk mark $1
• Knowing where to put it $49,999
It was paid in full and the engineer retired again in peace

[Anonymous]

$400 a day makes 100K a year, not bad for the guy doing the work without the BS. I was talking to a reseller about playing AE until i figured out that for their $1400 a day I was getting $280 to do the actual work. Crap, give me 100K to just do the work and ignore the marketing/sales crap, I'll sign right up.

Booker