That CAD Girl is happy to be a sponsor for the NC Society of Surveyors 18^th annual MAPS (Museum of Archives and Preservation of Surveying, Inc) Golf Tournament that is coming up Friday October 21, 2016. This year’s event will be held at the Silver Creek Plantation in Morganton, NC.

From their announcement:

This is a great way for you and your associates, clients and friends to enjoy a glorious day of golf, sportsmanship and fun! Upon completion of play, your scores will be posted and prizes will be awarded to the winners at dinner. Longest drive and closest-to-the pin contests will provide interesting additions to the main tournament activity. Prizes for these contests will be offered. Mark your calendar and start putting your foursome together now!

You can find out more by visiting their website at http://ncsurveyors.com/  or Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/nc.surveyors

Carlson is expected to release the 2016 versions of their desktop software packages that include IntelliCAD or run on top of your AutoCAD later this month. If it follows the same pattern we can expect the embedded AutoCAD (OEM) versions of Survey and Takeoff a couple of months later.

The 2016 products can be installed on top of any full-AutoCAD program versions 2010-2016. Since Autodesk didn’t change the DWG format this year, you should be able to open and work with 2016 files with programs based on AutoCAD 2013-2015 without having to save back to an earlier version.

The 2016 release will include IntelliCAD 8.1 which, so far during my limited time testing, seems to be working pretty darn well. I’m excited to see more support for Annotative Text  and a lot of interface enhancements (like a ribbon) that make it look more and more like the brand-name product.

The annual maintenance plan is still the cheapest way to keep your desktop software (ICAD/for CAD) up to date. If you have let your maintenance lapse but think you’re ready to upgrade, now is seriously the time to do it because your pricing to upgrade/reinstate maintenance will go up as soon as 2016 comes out. It’s also nice to be able to immediately get the 2015 upgrade and have access to the 2016 whenever you’re ready.

In addition, Carlson is trying to get SurvCE and SurvPC on an annual release cycle so we should see 5.xx come out this year. With this change, you’ll also see these products start showing up as available for an annual maintenance plan. If you’re running an older version of SurvCE and would like to upgrade, you can upgrade and purchase maintenance to immediately upgrade you to 4.xx and also receive 5.xx when it comes out. One word of caution though – make sure to check the table on this page to make sure the newer versions of SurvCE and SurvPC will still communicate with your equipment.

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With the end of perpetual licensing for some/most Autodesk products coming on January 16, 2016, Autodesk is running a few promotions to encourage current users to embrace the switch.

Click here for Autodesk’s Buyer’s Guide or email me to request access to the recording of my recent webinar with an Autodesk reseller and Carlson Software programmers explaining how these changes may affect us going forward.

You will want to touch base with your local Autodesk reseller or, if you don’t currently work with anyone, email me for a recommendation…

Some of the promotions include:

• Discounted purchases of AutoCAD LT
• Rebates on new seats, maintenance and desktop subscriptions – Ends July 24, 2015
• Financing options and discounts for multi-year renewals – Ends July 24, 2015

Robert Green seems to have answers for everything – if you haven’t subscribed to his CAD Manager Newsletter yet, you should!

Here, in How Will You Buy CAD Software in 2016?, he tackles Autodesk’s move to a Subscription only (rental) distribution model and encourages everyone to prepare for the transition now.

The only quibble I’d have is with this quote:

It’s important to note that this change will affect only those customers who already own perpetual licenses of standalone desktop software; it does not affect customers using Autodesk product suites or those already on a desktop subscription plan or using cloud services.
Anyone who has been through the Land Desktop transition to Civil 3d should understand that statement is probably best read with a big YET inserted at the end…