Topic: Civil 3D 2007 - W A R N I N G ! ! !

[Dinosaur]

James Wedding has published an update regarding this problem.  It can be read HERE.  Thankfully, the problem MAY not be as serious as it appeared at first.

[Jason Hickey]

My company will not allow us to load passed LDD/2005. If Autodesk doesn't get this ALL fixed by the next release the plan is to drop all of our AutoDesk seats and go totally Carlson.A lot of other companies I know of are looking at the same fix. I think AutoDesk is fixin' to have a problem. My company has 35 seats that are fixin' to "Go South" in more way than one. They have had 3 years to come up with a useable package and, so far, they have failed to do so.   :pissed: :pissed: :pissed:

Errr, we really should talk, especially since you're in Mississippi and all.   

Put some faith in me.    I can't promise that it won't be a bumpy ride, but I feel comfortable telling you that we can get to our destination   

Contact me.   If you go to our website (either civil3d.com or my corporate site), you'll find my contact information.    35 seats makes me take notice 

[dbreigprobert]

I typically find drawing recovery to be a big freaking waste of time. 

Get in the habit of real saves.  I don't care what program you are using- Word, Excel, Corel, AutoCAD, Civil 3D of any version, etc.

Save for real.

If real saving takes too long- there is something wrong with your drawing, the way your data is managed, your network, something else.

Save for real.  If you crash, shrug it off and skip the recovery.  I have wasted more time that I care to keep track of waiting for a drawing to recover only to have it NOT recover.  I could have redrawn in that time and been back to normal.

When parceling, I do a real save every five minutes or less.  Autosave contributes to more parceling crashes than it fixes.

I do, however, like .baks.

Dana

[Dinosaur]

I agree with you about the regular hard saves, but I have found no problems with restoring the recovery drawings generated by 2006 after a crash . . . enough so I erased the big red "SAVE MY ***" shortcut button from my desktop.  Any file I have restored through this feature has been complete and stable.  It is frankly one of my favorite additions to 2006.  What problems have you observed?

[rkmcswain]

If Autodesk doesn't get this ALL fixed by the next release

LOL... You KNOW that isn't going to happen.

the plan is to drop all of our AutoDesk seats and go totally Carlson.A lot of other companies I know of are looking at the same fix.

Yep.

[rkmcswain]

I typically find drawing recovery to be a big freaking waste of time.

Get in the habit of real saves.  I don't care what program you are using- Word, Excel, Corel, AutoCAD, Civil 3D of any version, etc.

A) I agree with your second statement. There is no substitute for QSAVE.
B) Drawing Recovery is not a waste of time if the power goes out and that is when you find out your UPS doesn't work. Rare? Yes. But I have seen this happen to a user. And we get more than our fair share of power outages in this building....
C) In our experiance with C3D, running a QSAVE *caused* a crash to occur about 1/2 the time. (Reason #37945 we are still using LDT.)

[Dent Cermak]

My company will not allow us to load passed LDD/2005. If Autodesk doesn't get this ALL fixed by the next release the plan is to drop all of our AutoDesk seats and go totally Carlson.A lot of other companies I know of are looking at the same fix. I think AutoDesk is fixin' to have a problem. My company has 35 seats that are fixin' to "Go South" in more way than one. They have had 3 years to come up with a useable package and, so far, they have failed to do so.   :pissed: :pissed: :pissed:

Errr, we really should talk, especially since you're in Mississippi and all.   

Put some faith in me.    I can't promise that it won't be a bumpy ride, but I feel comfortable telling you that we can get to our destination   

Contact me.   If you go to our website (either civil3d.com or my corporate site), you'll find my contact information.    35 seats makes me take notice 

We have had the assistance of your firm before and that is not the problem (We were probably one of your firm's earliest clients. Back in the Alabama CadCam days. We also have one of y'alls old instructor types working here now.) The problem is that 90% of our clients are not on anything close to 2007. The 2007 does not save BACK in a useable format. If our clients are not getting the full functionallity that they are used to, they tend to get chapped. We have to send the full project folder to most of our clients, not just the .dwg file.

[Jason Hickey]

That's a fine line to walk - do we let our clients dictate how we upgrade, or our profitability?    Of course, if you don't, then you run into the fact that they may not be clients anymore.    But ask yourself, what do they REALLY need my drawing for?   Just to show on one of their base plans, or to do actual work from?

Sorry, just playing devil's advocate here.   I understand what you're saying.    And I look forward to meeting next time we're in Jackson.   As a matter of fact, I'll be there next Tuesday and Wednesday for a class.

[LE]

I see the recommendation of Carlson (Civil 2007) (been reading topics about civil 3d for a while)... Is this software also using custom objects as C3D? or it works with plain jane autocad entities?, and do they have their own 3D terrain modeler? or they do by triangulations/interpolations calculations to mention ones... it is all per see automatically recreated in this case too as appears being done with C3D utilities?

For now simply curiosity, in case anyone have any experience about Carlson software.... Thanks!

[rkmcswain]

I see the recommendation of Carlson (Civil 2007) (been reading topics about civil 3d for a while)... Is this software also using custom objects as C3D? or it works with plain jane autocad entities?

Plain AutoCAD entities. No Object Enablers required.

, and do they have their own 3D terrain modeler? or they do by triangulations/interpolations calculations to mention ones... it is all per see automatically recreated in this case too as appears being done with C3D utilities?

Similar action to C3D. Add a point and surface, profiles, and X-Sec updates, etc.

[LE]

Plain AutoCAD entities. No Object Enablers required.

Similar action to C3D. Add a point and surface, profiles, and X-Sec updates, etc.

Thanks.

Now I do not understand why the need to use C3D - if still requires a lot of hoops ? (talking from a programmer point of view)

[Dent Cermak]

As long as you do something in Civil3D/2007 and the save it to 2000 format and the resulting product is NOT FULLY compatible with LDD2002/2003/2004/2005, etc. the product is USELESS. Now has this been fixed in SP1?
I have received drawings like this with all the points in the drawing. I can do NOTHING with the drawing but, basically, look at it. The points will not load to a text file, nor will they make point groups. They just sit there. Staring at me. That's spooky. real spooky. TAKE IT AWAY !!!!!!!  :doa:

[Dinosaur]

Sorry Dent, but I don't think that behavior can be changed.  Even exporting down to 2004 format will yield proxy objects and the saveas just beaks everything down to the basic native elements.  Those points most likely have 2 different lines making up the little X or + and the values are plain dtext.  If you want those points, you will have to make them export a point file to send along with the drawing.

[Dent Cermak]

and it does the same thing with a lot of the line work too. Is this the final solution to FORCE people off of all previous versions? (I know a lot of people still on R14 and many claim 2005 was the last viable release and they WILL NOT move up.)
Here's rthe catch. From what I have read here, most of y'all do drawings that stay "in-house" for all of its phases of design. My drawings ALL go "out of house". I prepare the base for all future work to be done on the site. Thus, I MUST be compatible with all of the software my clients use.(And MAN!! do some of them use squirelly stuff!! Why, one EVEN uses DataCad!! Can you imagine!!) So, total compatibility is a MAJOR issue for me. With LDD 2005 I have that compatibility, With 2007 I do not. Now 'splain to me again the benefits of uograding? I can do my work better and easier, BUT the client will never be able to use it? So, I become a "One Men Army" and FORCE my clients to upgrade too?
Guys, I am out here in the real world and having to deal with these issues every day. If I did just shop drawings, it would be so much easier.

[Jason Hickey]

Ahh, but there's the catch.    You're using LDT, which uses custom objects.   Try opening one of your LDT drawings with contours and points in plain-jane AutoCAD - you'll see what I mean.   The thing is, you're using a piece of software that is compatible with the MAJORITY of your clients.    What do you send the Data CAD client?   A DWG?   DXF?   PDF?      The fact remains that you can save a Civil 3D 2007 format file back to AutoCAD R14 (and further, I believe).   Yes, it's going to be lines, curves, and text.   However, if you're exporting Land Desktop drawings to R14, that's what you're giving them anyway.  So what's the main difference?   

Nothing personal here, I just like to be argumentative today