Well, let's give this a shot. I thought we might use this thread to just introduce ourselves, explain why we're using Civil 3D, and what we see as issues. Then, if we use new threads for each of our questions or problems or concerns or whatever, hopefully we'll all find this forum more useful. If there aren't enough of us, and this doesn't work, I guess we'll just go back to limping along as we were. Sigh.

Anyway, I'm Carolyn Allen. I work for Advanced Geomatics just north of Detroit. We're land surveyors. We do a lot of work for McDonald's and The Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT). So I draw topographical and boundary surveys and a lot of roads and bridges.

I've worked with computers for almost 30 years, computer graphics for over 25, and CAD (including some Microstation) for 8.

Other than basic line work and labels and such our primary needs are COGO. I'm concerned about annotation (bearings and distances), but mainly I need to be able to import points and put their attributes on different layers. EaglePoint, our old COGO software made this easy. AutoCAD does not.

We switched to Civil 3D because our IT person (my boss's son, who - admittedly is VERY good) thinks AutoCAD is phasing out Land DeskTop and replacing it with Civil 3D. My boss refuses to give up AutoCAD R14 and EaglePoint and there's a BIG part of me that doesn't blame him. I don't want to give it up, either, but I feel like we're being pressured to.

Ok, who's next?

(I wish there was a moderator who could "pin" this thread to keep it on top.)