So, ive given up. This feature is pretty much useless and creates a TON more work for me and the other guys switching from LDT. I would like to know if there is anyway to make lines come in and NOT BE SURVEY FIGURES. I would LOVE to have my NORMAL 2D POLYLINES back. So would the 25 survey engineers that I work with.
Is this even possible in this pice of junk extremly expensive software?
I still find certain things I could do faster using DOS than I can with Windows. That doesn't mean I'm going to hang on to DOS. There are too many other benefits of Windows.
I'm just saying...
Tim
I'm debating the same question having finally moved on from Carlson for Land Desktop. Any thoughs on 3rd party software like SmartDraft's PConnect?
My comment for the OP.
Over the last seven years I would bet that 90% of the people on this board have made the exact same transition from LDT to Civil3d. Darn near every single one of those people (including me) started out by trying to use polylines the way that we were used to, and hated featurelines because they were "impossible to work with."
A huge majority of those people have already realized that the benefits of having intelligent, dynamic, 3d objects in drawings outweigh the costs of creating and manipulating them. I certainly agree that survey figures are not for everyone but there are procedures that work for creating the surface breaklines and linework for display purposes.
Newcomers can repeat the old arguments - we've heard them all before, or they can accept the fact that a lot of us have already been there and done that.
"A huge majority of those people have already realized that the benefits of having intelligent, dynamic, 3d objects in drawings outweigh the costs of creating and manipulating them."
Having un-editable, hardly working "features" that require a whole training class just to be able to make an out-of order line correct (during which the instructors PC crashed C3d , 2 times) does not seem beneficial to me in anyway.
Coming from a 11 year surveyor, they are a gimmick that we are being forced to use without any real world tests. WE pay an EXTREMLY large amount of money each year to deal with this terrible piece of software. Cool, I get it C3d is for ENGINEERS what about the other 50% of that whole process (THE SURVEY DEPARTMENT) we are being left out in the cold with truly worthless "features" that are CLEARLY not tested.
All I want is to import lines as 2d polys and not feature lines. Do any of you Civil geniuses know how to do that?
Edited by
Discussion_Admin
[...All I want is to import lines as 2d polys and not feature lines. Do any of you Civil geniuses know how to do that?]
This question has already been answered. C3D will not create 2d polylines automatically for you. Let the figures happen then flatten and explode them. It'll take you about a minute. Then unlock the points in the drawing. Another 22 seconds. Now forget about the survey DB and now you have a DWG with points and legacy 2d polylines. Edit like you always have.
Still waiting on anyone here to prove that C3D is faster than LDD at processing a topo survey. My challenge is still open.
Closed circuit to the last post - we are not talking about design here. This post is about the survey module. I agree the civil aspects - grading, hydro, corridors, etc. are much improved from LDD. You might say lights years ahead. Survey however is 100% not. A definite leap backwards. Anyone having experience with it agrees, including our distributor.
thanks,
Jason
I really don't thin either of those questions apply. It your C3D experience that should be questioned
Rick Jackson
Survey CAD Technician VI
Did you find this post helpful? Feel free to Like this post.
Did your question get successfully answered? Then click on the ACCEPT SOLUTION button.
@Anonymous wrote:Hey Tim Corey -
Then explain to us how a surveyor benefits moving on to C3D from LDD?
Let's see:
1. Surface object remembers all of your edits and lets you select which to apply.
2. Surface activitiy can be moved up and down the list so a boundary applied before edits along the edge can be moved below those edits and does not have to be re-created.
3. Point group remembers its properties so that styles can be applied and held even if points are re-imported.
4. Use of No Display point group allows isolation of point groups without using layers. (!)
5. Surface volumes are faster/easier and 2013 has the volumes dashboard. (2012 does, too, if you download from Subscription Center.)
That's all I have time for. Have a great day and keep these discussions going!
Tim
@Anonymous wrote:
>From your list of points, I agree volumes are much faster, but no.s 1, 2, 4 are fluff, and no. 3 you could do with LDD. The cost difference for a surveyor moving from LDD to C3D is not worth it in my opinion.
Well, that's your opinion, wrong as it may be.
I'm quite familiar with C3D and familiar with LDD. Sorry, LDD loses.
Autodesk aimed to create a product that encompasses the surveying AND design in one package. LDD was never really geared for both, and for what it was geared for, it was extremely limited in scope and functionality. C3D uses a similar yet more complex approach, thereby allowing it to become infinitely more versatile, customizable, and useful than LDD ever was. LDD was great in its own time, but now is mostly obsolete.
You're in a pit of quicksand here, Jasono2009, because the harder you fight, the further you sink. I'd suggest simply cutting your losses.
What you're arguing here is akin to eating soup with a fork (LDD). Why not spend the extra money and get a spoon, or better yet, a soup spoon (C3D) designed for eating soup? Not te mention the value of the time savings. Forgive the analogy, but it illustrates my point. You're not technically wrong in saying that LDD will do some of the things C3D does, but it does not do them as fast or as easily as C3D, nor as flexible.
All those things you mentioned - preliminary plat, topos, drafts of surveys, etc. are much more easily accomplished in C3D than LDD, I assure you. The only reason you may disagree is that you do not know C3D well enough, and it takes time to learn a new product. That's fine. There are several classes, webinars, manuals, help files, etc. that you can use in order to learn it. My hunch is you dont have a firm grasp on the surveying sie of C3D, but you've been using LDD for years and are "stuck" in the old software. C3D can do so much more, it just takes some time to learn it. Good luck!
@Anonymous wrote:
Owen- Wrong on all accounts. I've used C3D since 2009. I've used it so much that I currently have a 'best practice' draft in progress. In addition to being a Civil PE I am a licensed surveyor in multiple states, and a federal licensed land surveyor. I used LDD (including the Softdesk version) since 1997. I also taught Autocad at a university for 2 years and a technical college for 1 year. While I agree C3D is the answer for most civil design applications (with the exception of mass haul), it is substandard for most surveying applications because 1. It is slower or offers no change in benefit. 2. The cost-benefit ratio doesn't equate. When it comes to plats C3D may be able to subdivide lots faster but can it process a topo survey faster? Absolutely not.
Are you sure about that? I just took a 3487 point survey this morning from a CSV file, uploaded it into a new survey database, and got all my figures & symbols placed in my drawing in about 45 seconds. Because I flag what figures are breaklines, I just create a survey query that takes any figure marked as a breakline and add it to a surface. My topo is already done. Took about three minutes to create the topo and it'll take me about ten minutes to add labels & create a layout.
Now you tell me if LDD can create a 3500 point topo, have everything on the correct layers and styles, and have a contour map prepared with labels in about 15 minutes.
@Anonymous wrote:
>From your list of points, I agree volumes are much faster, but no.s 1, 2, 4 are fluff, and no. 3 you could do with LDD. The cost difference for a surveyor moving from LDD to C3D is not worth it in my opinion.
Fluff? Not to me. I find those features very important.
Regarding no. 3, Land Desktop allowed you to set display properties based on a point group, but it did not remember those settings as point group properties, so they would change if you re-imported the points. There was not even a vestige of a point group display hierarchy.
Can't find what you're looking for? Ask the community or share your knowledge.