Carlson Software vs Civil 3D

[Anonymous]

Hello,

I recently came across a software called Carlson, which looks very similar to Civil 3D. I would like to know which one is better and what are the differences. This is because Carlson is very cheap when compared to Civil 3d. So, if Carlson has all the features that is present in Civil 3D, it would be a better option.

[AllenJessup]

This is a bit of a strange place to ask. I'd think that most on this forum would say Civil 3D is better and on a Carlson forum would say Carlson. I haven't used Carlson so I can't comment on specifics. An analogy I might make is that if you need to buy a vehicle. You need to know what you're going to use it for. Simple transportation would only require an inexpensive passenger car. If you need to include equipment. You need to know what it will weight and what volume it will occupy. So you may need a Van or a Utility Body or a Box Truck.

Civil 3D is the freight train of the line. Before Civil 3D there was Land Desktop. Land was a collection of Lisp and other program files storing data in external databases. It worked. You could import points, create surfaces, create; alignments, profiles and X-sections. But nothing near the power of Civil 3D. So a lot will depend on what you'll be doing and the complexity of it.

I'd suggest posting on a professional sight for Engineers and/or Surveyors. Where you might find users of both software's and maybe others.

[tcorey]

If Carlson was a better option for more companies, then they, rather than Autodesk, would dominate the civil engineering software market. Just sayin'....

[rl_jackson]

Choice your poison!

I can say that every dwg that I have used created from Carlson was corrupt to some degree when trying to work with it, (same said by the Carlson users) sad thing is there are firms out there trying to justify the causality that this causes,, Being product (acad does not equal intellacad) centric does work.

(Not trying to sound like a salesman but if the shoe fits)

[hencoop]

It depends upon what you want to do.  Our surveyors prefer Carlson for their work.  We have no problems with using its drawings in AutoCAD Civil 3D... but we have a custom tools in AutoCAD that can read the objects it creates for points.  Those will just be blocks for AutoCAD Civil 3D users who don't have a custom tool to read them as if they were C3D points.  Nevertheless, the surveyors also give us ASCII point files which AutoCAD Civil 3D easily imports.