Carlson released a new build of their desktop software earlier this week. This includes updates to the IntelliCAD/for AutoCAD versions of Survey, Civil, Hydrology, GIS, Basic Mining, Geology, Underground Mining, Surface Mining, Natural Regrade, Field, Takeoff, Construction and Point Clouds.

To confirm your current build number, go to Help > About Carlson. You’ll see the build number on the top line of the text box.

You can download the latest full version or updates to your current installation here.

If you would like to try out any of the Carlson Software products for 30-days, email me here.

For those anxious to try out the very latest and greatest updates in the testing versions of IntelliCAD 7.1, you can also send me an email to gain access to a new blog, “The Little CAD Engine That Could”, administered by Leonid Entov of Carlson Software.

Participation in the testing and access to the blog is by invitation only, so email me and I’ll pass along your request.

You can download the most recent updates to Carlson’s 2012 desktop software HERE

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

Independence All the Way

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!