Topic: How to create contours

[Dinosaur]

Here's a thought...........you guys could move this to one of the Code Red forums, depends on how you want to create this. This could be the first "Swamp Toolkit" app..................
Like I said........just a thought.

We are trying to put some open source stuff together here in KC as well.  Some will be targeting Civil 3D but I want most of it for vanilla or even the Intelicad programs.

[LE]

We are trying to put some open source stuff together here in KC as well.  Some will be targeting Civil 3D but I want most of it for vanilla or even the Intelicad programs.

I can say only this:

Autodesk is now in serious conversations about buying the rights of a product that runs in plain vanilla, I do not know if it is to put it out of the market to force all into the C3D or only to have another alternative.....

[Dinosaur]

Any alternative might be the end of Civil 3D.  They would do better by worrying about Bentley's Power Civil than someone's vanilla suite if they are afraid of competition.

[Bob Wahr]

Never used Power Civil but having used much of Bentley's wonderful "SelectCAD" series of products, Autodesk has less to worry about from Bentley's vertical apps than they do from Bentley's CAD package.

[Dinosaur]

Power Civil doesn't even use a CAD engine although dwg or dgn data can be brought into it.

[Bob Wahr]

Interesting.  Might not be a bad thing then.

[Dinosaur]

There is a demo availalble at Bentley's home page for viewing. . . quite interesting.

[Swift]

I'm sure something like this would be appreciated.

You can say that again!!

Imagining and open source survey/civil package for vanilla . . .

That is exactly what I would like to see!

[Dent Cermak]

Where this appears to be headed to is the creation of something akin to the old SoftDesk products. If y'all succede, I will buy the first copy. SDSK8 was just so easy and logical. AutoDesk bought it, scarambled it up, moved stuff, renamed stuff and screwed it up. Something easy and intuitive to use! Wow, what a dream! 
I have tried SelectCad. Major suckage. Our Anygraph guys use it to get  tha autoline work that I have in LDD. That saves SO much time.
We have a couple of Carlson packages in the field. I'm not really sold on it. It's a little quirky.  :ugly:
Another question: does everyone use the Figure Prefix library and the descriptor keys for their topos? I have been told that only about 10% of the LDD operators use these features. I find that hard to believe.

[Mark]

Another question: does everyone use the Figure Prefix library and the descriptor keys for their topos? I have been told that only about 10% of the LDD operators use these features. I find that hard to believe.

I would use them a lot more if the data I got had decent descriptors, right now I'm translating a caice xyz file into csv form then importing the points.

[Dinosaur]

Where this appears to be headed to is the creation of something akin to the old SoftDesk products. If y'all succede, I will buy the first copy. SDSK8 was just so easy and logical. AutoDesk bought it, scarambled it up, moved stuff, renamed stuff and screwed it up. Something easy and intuitive to use! Wow, what a dream!
I have tried SelectCad. Major suckage. Our Anygraph guys use it to get tha autoline work that I have in LDD. That saves SO much time.
We have a couple of Carlson packages in the field. I'm not really sold on it. It's a little quirky. :ugly:
Another question: does everyone use the Figure Prefix library and the descriptor keys for their topos? I have been told that only about 10% of the LDD operators use these features. I find that hard to believe.

The guy up here is planning to opensource everything he writes . . . treat it kind of like linux and let others make it better if they can . . . trouble is he already has a day job AND a night job and still likes to play too, so I may have to get serious about writing code yet if we are ever going to get anywhere.
Carlson never got a good trial here.  They bought the 2004 version and about the time they realized they didn't know how to use it we got LDD 2005 so Carlson is on the shelf with no CAD engine.
Our surveyor refuses to use the LDD prefix library and descriptors.  He wrote something that he prefers to use so we have to use his rinky output that nobody else understands. . . no dwg from him, its dxf files only . . . harumph!

[LE]

I'm sure something like this would be appreciated.

You can say that again!!

Imagining and open source survey/civil package for vanilla . . .

That is exactly what I would like to see!

It sound good, I have seen this before many times, it is possible, but requires a lot of effort.

The little I know on C++/ARX took me about three years to get somehow familiar, and another 8 months to developed my first full application with this language.

I found very little help from the masters, with the exceptions of CG, CB, FM, OW and BB and I maybe another two that at this moment I forgeting.... as you can see very few really are willing to lend a hand, and in the other side, it is not easy to code in C++ and worst in ARX.

Hope you find a team and come up with a decent product.

Good luck!

[Scott]

I use ezysurf.  www.ezysurf. com  it works great.  Draw in your breaklines and it generates the tin and the contours.  It runs inside autocad.  It sure beats running the contours in a 3rd party package, exporting, importing.  There is a free limited demo on their site.  At 55 bucks, you aren't going to find anything cheaper.  I've compared the contours from ezysurf to I believe a program called TDS (Not sure though).  My surveyor generated the contours with his software, I generated mine with ezysurf.  They came out pretty much identical.  I've compared the dirt work calculations with whatever Autocad is using and came within 200 cubic yards on a 200,000 cubic yard project.  Maybe that isn't as accurate as most would like, but for what I do it is just fine, and the right price.

Scott