TheSwamp
CAD Forums => Vertically Challenged => Land Lubber / Geographically Positioned => Topic started by: sinc on April 29, 2007, 11:18:02 AM
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I've spent the last couple of days using Civil-3D and Land Desktop 2008, and so far I have to say it has me really scared...
I've seen bugs, and I've seen a lot of things I hoped would be fixed that aren't, but so far I haven't seen anything really wrong. Am I missing something? Or could Autodesk just possibly have <gasp> gotten a good release out?
C3D in particular seems much faster and more stable. I'm tempted to just jump in and roll it out, but I'm still really gun-shy after last year. Land Desktop seemed OK at first glance, but as soon as we started really trying to use it, the interminable crashes became very infuriating. But by the time we discovered the issues, we were already rolling with it, and just had to suffer until the SPs came out. But so far, this release seems much better than 2007, and I really don't want to wait.
Who's been using 2008 out there, Land Desktop as well as Civil-3D? What do you think?
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One thing I'm curious about in LDT. On the Adesk newsgroup there has been one report of a consistent crash when viewing cross sections:
Anyone else experience a fatal error when attempting to view cross sections
in Civil Design 2008? Every machine, whether new or old, exhibits this
behavior and there appears to be no common denominator. Every workstation,
every project, every time gets the dreaded "Fatal Error: Unhandled
c0000000dh Exception at 78144354h".
Since I don't have the CD module I cannot check this, have you used that function yet in 2008?
C3D2008 is a dream compared to 2007SP3. Yes, there are a few issues yet to be worked out but they are minor when compared with the improvements in stability. In fact, I have yet to crash 2008 under normal working conditions. I have seen crashes, but every one of them I can attribute to testing different coding options. I can consistently get a Fatal error by using either Lisp, VBA, or C#.NET, fortunately it only occurs after all drawings have been saved & closed.
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I'm still waiting impatiently for delivery.
My main concern about implementing 2008 revolves around Vault.
As far as I can recall none of the Beta testers had access to Vault 2008.
Pretty sure I read every thread in the Cannon Feedback forum and I don't think Vault was mentioned.
My preference would be to create my new Vault and migrate my existing projects into it and upgrade everyone.
Too much risk IMO to do with a fresh product.
If you are not running Vault, from everything I have heard, I'd start rolling it out on Monday.
And the Bug in creating Network Deployment sites just P*sses me off.
I want to be the VP of Quality Control at Autodesk instead of the chimp who has that title now.
Of course I wouldn't last long but it might be fun for a few minutes.
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As far as I can recall none of the Beta testers had access to Vault 2008.
Cough.
You just never asked. And what you had in B3 was the final Beta of Vault 2008, but few people installed it.
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Received disk from reseller on Thursday and disk from autodesk on Friday. Has been installed since Thursday and have hit a bump in the road with creating sheets. we are working with autodesk to fix problem and to figure out if it is ours or 2008. We are not using vault. We immediately threw an 07 project into 08 and started creating sheets. 08 does seem faster and more stable in general. i don't think we will look back from this point and hopefully there are smooth seas ahead. shift - mbutton for snaps is different and is driving me crazy.
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I'm still waiting impatiently for delivery.
My main concern about implementing 2008 revolves around Vault.
As far as I can recall none of the Beta testers had access to Vault 2008.
Pretty sure I read every thread in the Cannon Feedback forum and I don't think Vault was mentioned.
My preference would be to create my new Vault and migrate my existing projects into it and upgrade everyone.
Too much risk IMO to do with a fresh product.
If you are not running Vault, from everything I have heard, I'd start rolling it out on Monday.
And the Bug in creating Network Deployment sites just P*sses me off.
I want to be the VP of Quality Control at Autodesk instead of the chimp who has that title now.
Of course I wouldn't last long but it might be fun for a few minutes.
Maybe it's just me but I don't see C3D as a "fresh product", more like on-going beta testing. Don't get me wrong, so far I like C3D but it still evolving. What are some of the major changes to C3D in 2008? Sorry I haven't had time to look it up.
Waiting for my disks to show-up... *sigh*
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Intersting remark made by the guy that used to be the head of our IS group.
" It's all Beta"
I think at least as far as I am concerned is that the development team really worked on performance and stability.
They learned last year you can't put a product out for general use that blows up.
They learned that and made a MAJOR fix with SP3 of 2007.
Guy on a different thread said just think of this as C3D 2005 Service Pack 11.
All softwares evolve.
Built a XP box lately with original XP and run the updates?
I'm actually pretty excited to see how well it drives.
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I got C3D 2008 to crash. I used LAYISO to isolate some linework, and then tried to create a parcel from it. Things got VERY strange.
Haven't had enough time to do rigorous testing on it, but my initial suspect is that it has something to do with the change to LAYISO. Now, instead of turning the other layers OFF, it locks the other layers. This causes them to be displayed dimly, with half-highlighting. I don't think I really like this, because a primary reason for using LAYISO is to make sure my OSNAP is going to the right object, and it's still possible to OSNAP to objects on locked layers.
Anyway, my initial suspect is that something about having most of my layers locked caused an issue. I've had other C3D commands complain when I try to run them after doing a LAYISO, because they try to access data on a locked layer (not sure which one). But when I tried to create parcels, I got very stange behavior. It was supposed to be four parcels, and I got labels for four parcels, but they all appeared outside of the site and superimposed on top of each other, and three of them had the same areas. And only two parcels showed up in Toolspace. I finally decided C3D was in a bad state and tried to shut it down, but it crashed instead.
I'm not sure this problem had anything to do with locked layers, but that's my initial guess.
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So are the points any better? Does the program freeze when you select points, mover points, etc.?
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Well, I didn't have any issues with 2007 freezing while selecting points, and I still don't. But you probably won't see that problem in 2008.
I suspect the issue you were seeing is caused by a difference in hardware. Pre-2008, as you selected (or mouse-overed) points, the entire point group that the point belongs to would highlight. This probably hit slower machines pretty hard, but I haven't noticed it with my hardware. However, Autodesk changed the behavior, so Point Groups no longer highlight. So if you liked this behavior, too bad. But on the plus side, they fixed the "stuck highlighting" problem, so you don't have to regen in order to get rid of the highlighting after deselecting points.
Something that has me completely puzzled is why they got rid of Point Group Layers. I didn't like them all the time, but they were useful for some things. What I really wanted them to do is make the Point Group Layer an optional override, so that you could optionally use the Point Group Layer to override Point display. But they didn't - they completely removed what was a useful feature in some situations. This means you will probably have to do at least some measure of edits to your template file, to account for the new behavior.
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Well, I didn't have any issues with 2007 freezing while selecting points, and I still don't. But you probably won't see that problem in 2008.
I suspect the issue you were seeing is caused by a difference in hardware. Pre-2008, as you selected (or mouse-overed) points, the entire point group that the point belongs to would highlight. This probably hit slower machines pretty hard, but I haven't noticed it with my hardware. However, Autodesk changed the behavior, so Point Groups no longer highlight. So if you liked this behavior, too bad. But on the plus side, they fixed the "stuck highlighting" problem, so you don't have to regen in order to get rid of the highlighting after deselecting points.
Dang sinc what do you have for hardware! I've got a dual xeon 3.0 with 2gb of ram an nvidia quadro w/256mb of ram and scsi disks! I'm glad they fixed the highlighting problem, that drives me absolutely batty.
Something that has me completely puzzled is why they got rid of Point Group Layers.
As in this point group layer?
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Yep, that's the one, Mark.
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Dang sinc what do you have for hardware! I've got a dual xeon 3.0 with 2gb of ram an nvidia quadro w/256mb of ram and scsi disks! I'm glad they fixed the highlighting problem, that drives me absolutely batty.
That sounds like some of the Dell workstations (Precision 690, I think) that we have.
From what I've seen, I'm underwhelmed with their performance. It could have something to do with the fact that those Xeons are built for "ultimate reliability", which means they use things like ECC memory. That adds reliability at a hit to performance. Personally, I've never had noticeable reliability problems with non-ECC memory, so I don't see much point in taking the performance hit.
I'm also not too impressed with the motherboards that Dell typically sells. That might have even more to do with it. I think we have a 3.2 and a 3.4 GHz single-processor Xeons from Dell that perform WAY worse than our newest machines. And of course, Autocad (at least pre-2008) doesn't know how to use dual-processors, so that doesn't provide much advantage.
Anyway, the machines I've been building lately are custom-built, using E6700 Core 2 Duo chips and good motherboards. GFX have been the nVidia Quadro FX1500 for the last two machines, and of course the WD Raptor RAID striping array for the primary drive. Memory has been standard PC2-6400, 2GB, although I'm pushing to get them upgraded to 3GB as we go into the summer and have more money coming in.
But I've also been getting pretty decent performance on my computer at home, with only an Athlon64 4000+ and Quadro FX700, plus 3GB PC3200 RAM. But again, I have a good motherboard. So it's possible that the big performance hit on those Dell Xeon workstations (if that's what you have) is mostly because of the MOBO.
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ACK!!! Line/Curve labels in Land Desktop 2008 get all the leading zeros truncated!
I get delta angles and bearings that look like N5°8'3"E, instead of N05°08'03"E! YUCK! :realmad:
Thanks, Autodesk.
OTOH, C3D 2008 seems to be far better than 2007 SP3...
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Here's a minor one:
Autocad 2008 does not seem to allow any keyboard shortcuts to be assigned to CTRL+SHIFT+Z. I have no idea why. It used to be allowed pre-2008, and I haven't yet found any other keystroke combinations that are "not allowed", so I don't know why they disabled CTRL+SHIFT+Z.
I've had "Label Line by Points" in Land Desktop assigned to that keystroke combination since the 2006 version. Guess I have to get used to a different keystroke combination for it now.
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just in case there was any doubt, once again it appears you can not take drawings from the new version to the previous and do any work. I opened up mjfarrell's 2008 drawing in 2007 and could do nothing to C3D objects but view them. Toolspace wouldn't even come up so be prepared to make a full commitment if you decide to jump.
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just in case there was any doubt, once again it appears you can not take drawings from the new version to the previous and do any work. I opened up mjfarrell's 2008 drawing in 2007 and could do nothing to C3D objects but view them. Toolspace wouldn't even come up so be prepared to make a full commitment if you decide to jump.
That just doesn't make sense! Is it a bug or .... something else?
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No bug, just the way it is. Even a 2007 drawing pulled up and saved by 2008 changes the aec objects to 2008 vintage, forever lost to 2007.
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oh boy ..... *sigh*
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that would be the one . . . no surprise though, basically the same thing every time since the upgrade from 2005 to 2006.
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Wow ... make sure you have plenty of time before you start the installation process!
BTW ... new installation app, don't like it. Just more smoke and mirrors in my opinion.
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there is a fix for that problem . . . don't recall off hand but check the newsgroup.
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there is a fix for that problem . . . don't recall off hand but check the newsgroup.
does this help?
The new installer for these products incorrectly copies the data from the installation media to the destination folder multiple times, increasing the deployment creation time considerably.
To avoid this issue, it is strongly recommended that you copy the installation files to a local drive first and then run the installer on the local drive to create the deployment.
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I think that problem is only with the creation of a network deployment. Single installs aren't that bad....15 minutes, or so.
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No bug, just the way it is. Even a 2007 drawing pulled up and saved by 2008 changes the aec objects to 2008 vintage, forever lost to 2007.
Yup, we are beginning to shudder at the thought of finally needing to send data to someone else who is using C3D, but they are using the C3D 2007 version... :-(
I guess the thinking at Autodesk is that, at least for the forseeable future, you MUST be on subscription if you buy C3D, and you MUST stay up-to-date, installing new versions as they come out. Otherwise, you and everyone you work with will be miserable.
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sinc as usual you make a good point.
So far the version business hasn't effected us so much but in your shoes as having to submit topo's, plats, etc. to other companies that could be a big deal.
We get involved in many Team projects and that is always a problem.
Right now we are exporting C3D files out to acad 2004 format to dumb everything down so our styles don't get transferred.
We are looking at going the DWF route in order to get past that.
In your shoes as contracted to deliver electronic files to a design engineering firm, I don't know what you do.
Interoperability of the product line has been largely ignored by ADesk.
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You wouldn't beleive the hassle we've been having.
Just recently, we had to submit a design survey to a team that was using Acad 2002 with Eaglepoint. That was a nightmare. According to them, Eaglepoint does not do LandXML, and for some unknown reason C3D flattens all C3D objects to Z=0 when they are exported to Autocad. This means that they couldn't even explode objects to get elevated contours and TIN lines after we converted it to Autocad 2000 format.
Finally, I ended up importing the XML into Land Desktop, and then created 3D-Lines of the surface in Land Desktop. At this point, I noticed that the XML Export of the surface from C3D DID NOT include the surface boundary... :-o So I had to go back to C3D, pull the boundary out of there, and block it into Land Desktop. I added the boundary to the surface and reimported the 3D-Lines to give him a surface with clean edges, then converted the DWG to 2000 format. That worked.
What a hassle. Some people around our office are tempted to completely drop Autodesk because they don't seem to realize that WE NEED TO SHARE DATA WITH OTHERS!!!!! We can't keep dealing with this conversion hassle. If it weren't for the power of C3D, Autodesk would have already been dropped. I hope Autodesk realizes what a thin line they are walking.
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BTW, if you'll go into an ISO view before you do the export, the objects (contours, etc.) will have a Z elevation.
:mrgreen:
Edit: Now that you're on 2008, why wouldn't you just export data from surface anyway? At least for that stuff....
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ISO view, huh? Really? Thanks. And they say Autodesk software isn't intuitive... :roll:
This all happened a couple of days before 2008 arrived.
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The improvements to the points alone is worth the upgrade ... IMO anyway. :-)
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Interoperability of the product line has been largely ignored by ADesk.
Yes it has. Over four years back, we noticed that MAP inside C3D will query NO objects created by C3D. This despite the fact that MAP is inside of C3D. Irony, in theory there is a Service Patch to object enable MAP3D, only it can't be applied to MAP inside C3D because MAP3D isn't a separate install. Further Irony, there are some nice CIVIL tools inside MAP3, only you can't use them inside C3D because the Civil Menu items are not loaded with the C3D installation.
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I'm getting a lot of "command in progress. Hit enter to cancel or [Retry]:" when trying to save the dwg after using one of the Orbit commands, or a combination of orbit and 3D views.
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Haven't seen that one at all, and I've been doing a fair number of 3D-orbits. I've only really been using the Free Orbit, though. Think it might have something to do with the constrained orbits?
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I'm getting a lot of "command in progress. Hit enter to cancel or [Retry]:" when trying to save the dwg after using one of the Orbit commands, or a combination of orbit and 3D views.
A search of the Adesk forums suggests that this is a long standing issue with Autocad & it's Orbits, not just C3D. Many report that using the Express Tool "Save All Open Drawings", exiting and re-entering the drawing works...others say it doesn't help at all. <*shrug*> Sounds like it's just something "we gotta live with 'cus it ain't leaving anytime soon".
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I did see this message before. This was with 2007. It was most annoying, as I had THREE witnesses verify that I had issued no command. As I recall going to lunch 'solved' the problem.
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There was an issue with 2007, where autosave would cause this problem.
I turned off autosaves in 2007, and still have them off in 2008. Could this possibly be why I haven't seen the problem? Or do you guys have autosave turned off, too?
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I have autosave off and still have the same problem ... along with many others!
right-click -> options caused these a few minutes ago.
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I'm up to 5 or 6 ( I lost count ) fatal errors today, all while working with a surface. Without closing C3D, with a surface showing, I went to lunch, when I returned I was greeted with a fatal error! :lol:
For some reason I can't change the menus at all. No matter what I change in the CUI the menus never change.
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Mark, are you on a network version or single? I've seen many reports on the CUI problem, but I can change them at will....I'm a standalone install. Just wondering if it has to do with permissions for the network CUI's.
To fix the Fatal Error with a surface showing when going to lunch....... don't go to lunch, pretty simple, huh? :-)
Seriously, though, have you run an audit on your drawing(s) that crash?
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Mark, are you on a network version or single? I've seen many reports on the CUI problem, but I can change them at will....I'm a standalone install. Just wondering if it has to do with permissions for the network CUI's.
To fix the Fatal Error with a surface showing when going to lunch....... don't go to lunch, pretty simple, huh? :-)
Seriously, though, have you run an audit on your drawing(s) that crash?
1. stand alone. I wasn't having any problem with the cui at first then yesterday one of my menus wasn't showing up so I opened the cui to add back in; which I can do, it shows up in the cui but when I apply the changes everything stays the same. It's very strange.
2. :-)
3. Yes I ran audit on the dwg, 0 errors found. Well the last time anyway. Earlier today I ran audit and it crashed c3d.
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someone want to take a shot at
A) what does this mean:
ERROR: Could not instantiate AecDict!
when attempting to create a surface using this data as contours?
B) create a surface from the attached
C) explain why the attached point file (generated from a MAP query) report returns a stange error code and will not parse the points?
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Well, I had no trouble generating contours. All I did was unfreeze the 0 layer, then turn on contours in the display style. The surface was already built. I reattached the drawing here.
And your data file looks like it was exported as some sort of international format. Every other byte is a null, which confuses most things. I'm attaching an image of what it looks like in a Hex editor (since I can't seem to copy and paste the Hex output into the web browser).
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someone want to take a shot at
A) what does this mean:
ERROR: Could not instantiate AecDict!
when attempting to create a surface using this data as contours?
Not an answer, but I found this amusing when I Googled for it:
... open this one drawing in AutoDesk Civil 3D, it says, "ERROR: Could not instantiate AecDict! ... Not when the waitress tosses tarter sauce onto your lap! ...
So maybe the answer would be to not eat fish in a restaurant when using C3D?
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...............Not an answer, but I found this amusing when I Googled for it:
... open this one drawing in AutoDesk Civil 3D, it says, "ERROR: Could not instantiate AecDict! ... Not when the waitress tosses tarter sauce onto your lap! ...
So maybe the answer would be to not eat fish in a restaurant when using C3D?
I'm envious .. wish I could get answers like that from google ..
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Well, I had no trouble generating contours. All I did was unfreeze the 0 layer, then turn on contours in the display style. The surface was already built. I reattached the drawing here.
And your data file looks like it was exported as some sort of international format. Every other byte is a null, which confuses most things. I'm attaching an image of what it looks like in a Hex editor (since I can't seem to copy and paste the Hex output into the web browser).
OK, the surface question must have been sheer exhaustion.
The other question, well I haven't gotten the same error with that data today. (yet)
The exported TXT was just a straight-up MAP query to a report file. Producing what appears to be a coordinate file, until one attempt to import said data as points. Interoperability Check Please!
ERROR: Could not instantiate AecDict!
Waitress "I think there's a pill for that"
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New tools in feature lines not quite working or broken, what is the deal?
We are trying to follow the rules:
EG drawing separate shortcut to other drawings
every alignment in separate drawing
shortcut corridor surfaces to FG drawing
separate drawings for pipe alginments
FG drawing broken/corrupt/not working at the end of the day - very frustrating
This is almost a rant but come on we are trying our best and still getting kicked in the gut at the end of the day!
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The 1 alignment per drawing methodology is broken. You spend more time and data pushing things around than you do getting work done. What are you using for references? What features are broken?
Be specific, there are some interesting lurkers in the swamp....
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James,
Thank you for the response. To be quite honest I am turning another in our office onto this site who will be better to explain in greater detail so I may return to my lurking status. He will try to register today yet and start posting info.
The 1 alignment per drawing does not work, nice, this program is like skeet shooting, always like trying to hit a moving target. :-)
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Let me rephrase that. It works, it just sucks.
It's taking a mechanical mindset and shoving it into the CE world. That's what happens when you let the Inventor expert draft your workflow.
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lightbulb...
so if the one alignment per drawing does not work or sucks is this what is affecting our sheet set manager as well?
(domino effect)
another thought...
if adesk eyes are here we would gladly volunteer to be the next guinea pig for the software
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another thought...
if adesk eyes are here we would gladly volunteer to be the next guinea pig for the software
Careful what you wish for.
Anybody with a pulse can apply at Feedback and be accepted.
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Be careful knocking it. You guys (and me) would have been up a creek without some of those experimental softwares fixing the very stumbling blocks in our path.
It's possible the workflow is your issue, but it's probably somethign else.
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Be careful knocking it. You guys (and me) would have been up a creek without some of those experimental softwares fixing the very stumbling blocks in our path.
It's possible the workflow is your issue, but it's probably something else.
Ya I respect the crap out of them.
The guys in ManchVegas truly do listen to the ranting of the people who are trying to make this work.
Along with some other parts of the country. :-o
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I finally took the plunge and loaded my TRIAL copy of Civil 3D 2008 on my home box, I lost my virtual machine a few weeks back an haven't had time to set up a new one. There IS at least some good news. It appears all of my labels translate into 2008 without the problems others are noting. Of course most of my work has been with pipe and street profiles. I have made some use of the general labeling in lieu of parcels but I don't have any of those drawings at home to see what happens. From what I see though, our only major problem will be the loss of the point group layer property and it looks like we can work around that one. :kewl:
I just wish Manchester would decide to quit improving the aec objects each year so much they are not compatible with any other version of the program. At least keep the things stable enough to last for the life of the dwg format cycle. This is in effect the same thing as having a new dwg format every year. :realmad: