We are finally able to announce our end of year workshops for 2011. With the weather problems we encountered last year we decided to hold the events in the western end of North Carolina in November and toward the coast in December.

The cost to attend each event is $99 and lunch is included. See below for early bird registration details for each event. NC Licensed Surveyors and Engineers will receive 8 PDH credits and all attendees will receive a certificate confirming their attendance. We will have door prizes, software giveaways and special software or hardware pricing that is available the day of the show only.

We will be in Statesville on Tuesday, November 15^th and Asheville on Thursday November 17^th. Early bird registration is $89 through September 30^th.

We will be in Wilmington on Tuesday, December 13^th and Raleigh on Thursday December 15^th. Early bird registration is $89 through October 31^st.

You will be able to choose the sessions you wish to attend. This year’s sessions include:

• GIS from A to Z and Responding to GIS-related RFPs
  presented by Janet Jackson (GIS Janet) of Intersect
• Overview of Carlson Takeoff & Preparing Machine Control Data
  presented by Todd Carlson of Carlson Software
• Intro to SurvNet & Least Squares
  presented by Donnie Stallings, the original developer of the product
• CAD Standards Roundtable & Discussion
  presented by Jennifer DiBona, That CAD Girl
• CAD Tips & Tricks and hints for sharing data with others
  presented by Jennifer DiBona, That CAD Girl
• Overview of Carlson Software 2012 (Survey, Civil, Hydro, GIS, Point Clouds)
  presented by Scott Griffin of Carlson Software
• Field to Finish with Carlson Survey & SurvCE and the Surveyor+ GPS System
  presented by Butch Herter of Carlson Software and Jeremy Taylor
• Preview of future Carlson hardware
  presented by Butch Herter of Carlson Software and Jeremy Taylor
• Road Design and Site Design with Carlson Civil & Hydrology
  presented by Scott Griffin of Carlson Software

Note that all classes are not scheduled at all events and locations. See each workshop announcement for specifics. Seats are limited so register online, call 919.417.8351 or email us to register.

After many requests to hold training classes in different areas of the country, I’ve finally managed to schedule a few dates. The classes are 8 hours of hands-on training and seats are limited. Registration deadlines and pre-requisites vary for each class – Click the link below for the class announcement.

Classes include Intro to Survey, Surface Modeling, Least Squares/SurvNet, Quantity Takeoffs and Drawing Prep for Surface Modeling among others.

Call 919.417.8351 or ContactUs@thatcadgirl.com to register.

• May 2-3 – Columbus, Ohio
• May 16-18 – Raleigh, North Carolina
• May 23-25 – Atlanta, Georgia
• June 1-2 – Raleigh, North Carolina
• June 14-16 – Baltimore, Maryland

All classes listed below will be held at the Hampton Inn on Hampton Woods Lane in Raleigh, NC. Lunch will be provided and NC licensed Land Surveyors and Engineers will receive PDH credit hours for attending. A certificate will be provided to everyone completing the training and may be used for PDH credit in other states.

Registration for all classes is limited to 10 people – please call us at 919.417.8351 to register.

Intro to Carlson with a CAD Refresher, $249    July 12-13, 2010

This class will focus on the basics of Carlson Software along with a review of some IntelliCAD and AutoCAD features that will assist you when working with Carlson Software. Please click here for pre-requisites and more details or download a PDF with agenda and directions here.

Surface Modeling with Carlson Software, $249    July 26-27 or Aug 23-24, 2010

This class will start with an introductory lesson on existing ground surface modeling and will then move to proposed surface modeling techniques including modeling for site and subdivision design, ponds, retaining walls and multi-level building pads. Please click here for pre-requisites and more details or download a PDF with agenda and directions for July 26-27 or Aug 23-24 here.

My Field to Finish, $349     Aug 16-17, 2010

This class will provide an overview of Carlson’s Field to Finish feature and will provide each attendee with time to create a standard field to finish code file (.fld file) to be used in his or her office. We will also cover the creation of block libraries and custom linetypes that can be assigned to field codes. In order to ensure that each attendee is prepared for and brings the content needed for the class, a one hour pre-training session will be held online approximately 2-3 weeks before the class. Please click here for pre-requisites and more details or download a PDF with agenda and directions here.

My Company Standards, $349     Sept 20-21, 2010

This class provides training and guidance to help you create a comprehensive CAD standard for your company. We will cover standard layers, linetypes, pen weights, text styles, blocks and title blocks. A more detailed list and description of needed content will be provided after registration. In order to ensure that each attendee is prepared for and brings the content needed for the class, a one hour pre-training session will be held online approximately 2-3 weeks before the class. Please click here for pre-requisites and more details or download a PDF with agenda and directions here.

This is a good article about Bruce Carlson and where Carlson Software is planning to go in the future…

Independence All the Way

It’s time to take another look at Carlson Point Cloud.

Carlson’s Point Cloud program has been re-vamped with many powerful and exciting new features giving those folks struggling to process data generated from laser scanners the ability to process up to 1 billion points.

Carlson Point Cloud is even more valuable to land surveying, civil engineering and mining professionals because of its seamless integration with Carlson Survey, Carlson Civil and Carlson Mining.

With the new and improved Point Cloud program, your scan can be oriented to a local coordinate system and clouds can be “cleaned” to filter and thin out duplicate points. You also have the ability to snap to edges and code points for use with the Field to Finish feature of Carlson Survey. This allows you to define more accurate breaklines and create better surface models for generating contours, profiles & cross sections in Carlson Civil.

Read more about Point Cloud by clicking here. There are also several new 5 minute videos demonstrating the functionality of this program available here.

See key features of Carlson Point Cloud 2010

Looking for Carlson Software manuals? Prior to the 2010 release, Carlson included printed manuals with your purchase and, in addition, the manuals have always been available to print for yourself from the Help files.

With the 2010 release, Carlson “opened” a storefront on the self-publishing site called Lulu.com. You can order 2009 and 2010 Carlson Software manuals here http://stores.lulu.com/carlsonsw.

I’ve recently started using a very cool feature in Carlson Software. The bad thing… it was in the 2009 version and I didn’t even realize it!

I had no idea exporting our DWG files from IntelliCAD or AutoCAD out to Google Earth was so easy.

1. Download and install Google Earth. You can download it here: http://earth.google.com/
2. Open any one of your project DWG files that has been positioned at its correct state plane coordinate system.
3. In Carlson, go to Settings –> Drawing Setup and then select the correct Projection and correct Zone for the project site. If you’re not sure of the Projection, try using “State Plane 83”. This will work for most systems.
4. Next, go to File –> Polyline File –> Write Polyline File. When prompted for “Polyline File Format”, type “G” for Google. You will be prompted to specify a new filename and save location for a “Google Earth File to Write (.kml)”.
5. You will then be prompted to select the entities that are to be exported out to the .kml file and viewed in Google Earth. After selecting the entities, press Enter. For this exercise, we only want to see the drawing entities in 2D, so press “N” for “No” when prompted to “Use elevation from drawing in Google Earth [Yes/<No>]?”
6. Finally, you are then prompted “Would you like to display the file in Google Earth now [<Yes>/No]?”. Press “Y” for “Yes”. Google Earth should automatically launch and zoom into the project location.

In the example shown below and pointed out with arrows, notice how closely the new roads and designed turn lanes match up to the existing roadway. Also, you can see the designed graded slopes perfectly avoiding the tank that is to be preserved during construction.
Not too shabby…

This feature is available in all of the Carlson Desktop products: Carlson Civil, Survey, Hydrology, Construction and TakeOff.

Look for a future post on bringing Google Earth surface data into Carlson Software. Hint: It’s easy too!

With more construction bid sets being issued in Portable Document Format (PDF), more companies find themselves in the position of needing to generate estimating and construction data from these files. Carlson Software now provides tools to import PDF files into a drawing as either an image or as CAD linework. These tools are available exclusively through Carlson Takeoff 2010 and the new Carlson Construction 2010.

To import a PDF file into your CAD drawing, go to the Tools pull-down menu, then choose Import/Export, then choose Import PDF. You will be prompted to select whether you want the file imported as a background image or as linework. If you choose the linework option, it will automatically convert the elements of the PDF image into separate polylines. Please note, since this is an automatic conversion, it may take a while, so be patient as it processes.

Once the polylines have been brought into the drawing, you can use the standard clean-up tools to assign elevation information to these polylines. These tools can elevate polylines representing contours (single elevations) as well as those representing breaklines (varying elevations). This can be done with most of the Carlson desktop software modules including Takeoff, Construction, Survey, and Civil.

Once the polylines have been updated with the elevation information, they can be used to create surface models for design, estimating, staking, or machine control. This procedure can literally save hours of time that used to be spent manually recreating the information released as paper drawings or PDF files. Digitizing may have become a thing of the past!

The 2010 version of Carlson software running with IntelliCAD is officially available. This version offers support for 64-bit operating systems, Windows 7, and AutoCAD® 2010. This release is available from the Carlson website for download, or contact us for more information on requesting a demo CD. For those of you on the Carlson maintenance program, you may download the latest release from the Software download section of the Carlson website which can be found here.

If you are already using Carlson software and are part of their maintenance program, the Carlson update page has a new feature that allows you to receive your 2010 serial numbers through an on-line lookup feature. This can be found here. If you want to install your 2010 upgrade immediately, use this tool to look up your serial number, then download and install the software. CD’s will be shipped out to maintenance customers automatically, but you don’t have to wait, you can get started with all of the new features today!

To view the archived webinars covering several of the new features of this release, please visit the Carlson webinar archive here.

More information on this latest release will be provided as it becomes available.

Update by Jennifer: You can download a PDF with a list of Improvements in 2010 here:  Carlson 2010 Improvements

The new CAD Standards feature included in Carlson is one of the most time-saving features to come along in a long time. This feature is a collection of commands allowing you to create, manage and draw standardized Symbols, Linework and Annotation entities that are stored in a Standards Database file.

Carlson includes two Standards Database files (.sdb) with the installation: the Carlson_NCS_SurveyCivil.sdb which is a fully populated database based on the US National CAD Standard and empty.sdb which is a functional, but empty, database with which to start a new Standard Database.

Updates and additions to the .sdb files provided by Carlson Software will be posted to this website: www.carlsonsw.com/cadstandards.html.

You can click this link to view a webinar introducing the new feature.

The CAD Standards interface (loaded with the Carlson_NCS_SurveyCivil database) is shown here:

IMAGE!