Facts about carlson Software 2016

I found many of these questions & queries on a regular basis from people like geological exploration, mine planner's, mine designer's, mine consultant's, mining university's & many more. I thought it was a time to look into some of them & provide best answer's as possible as we can. In some cases, these answers are based on our own research & our reputed clients in the industry. Few of them, are based on Carlson reputed distributor's, dealer's, technical expert's & Carlson representative's from different countries..

Q-1)  Carlson Software uses basic AutoCAD entities instead of “intelligent objects”, it does not have 3D or dynamic abilities.
Carlson Software uses basic AutoCAD entities so that all drawings produced by their programs can be easily shared with any other DWG- or DXF-compatible program, regardless of version. Carlson has figured out a way to have the dynamic reactions work on basic entities such as lines, poly-lines and text.

                One example would be having profiles and storm drain structures automatically adjust their elevation as a centerline alignment is edited and changed along a surface. And, all of this happens without having to fight the dreaded “proxy objects”!  

Q-2)  Carlson works on top of IntelliCAD, so it doesn't works on the top of AutoCAD-based products.
Carlson Software has always worked on top of AutoCAD-based products and, if you listen to Bruce Carlson discuss the issue, hopes to always continue doing so.

In April 2008, Carlson began giving their customers an IntelliCAD-based “stand-alone” copy of their software with every purchase of Carlson Civil, Survey, Hydrology, GIS, TakeOff and other programs. (IntelliCAD is widely described as an “AutoCAD-clone”). This again, gives more power & options to Carlson users because it allows the user to choose whether to run Carlson on top of practically any version of AutoCAD, AutoCAD Map, Land Desktop, Civil 3D or on top of IntelliCAD.

                Also, with their Sight Survey program (launched in 2008), Carlson created their first program to run on top of MicroStation. At last year’s 25th Anniversary users’ conference, Bruce Carlson stated that Carlson hopes to have their software working on 4 different platforms within the next few years: IntelliCAD, AutoCAD, Microstation and ESRI.

Q-3)  Carlson doesn’t have CIVIL BIM “Building Information Modeling”-ability.
BIM (Building Information Modeling), by definition, has no relationship to the civil engineering industry. It is architectural in scope & refers to actual buildings and facilities.

                However, for several reasons there has been a push to re-define the term BIM to apply to Civil Engineering (in general) and Civil 3D (in particular). When discussing BIM in the context of Civil Engineering, it simply means that a software program has the ability to:

· design to specific criteria

· show a great visual representation of all the components of your project in 3D view

· dynamically reflect changes to your project.            

Can Carlson Software do all that? Absolutely.

Carlson can, and has been able to, produce true 3D models of civil/survey/utility project sites for years. These models can be viewed in 3D and quantities are dynamically updated whenever the model changes. Because Carlson has strongly served the U.S. mining industry for over 20 years, they long ago developed features for grading, material quantity calculations and surface viewing and visualization to meet the demands of this industry. In fact, the civil industry pales in comparison to the mining industry in regard to these demands.
 

Q-4)  In the Opencast Mine Design module, does Carlson have Haul road design & pit optimization with visualization & interactive mode facilities.

In the Surface Mining Module there is no facility for haul road design, but it is included in the Civil Module.

                There is a pit optimization facility in the Surface Design Module but it relates more to developing mining blocks with cost estimates to develop an ultimate pit shell. The pit optimization is based on the Lerch Grossman algorithm & creates an ultimate pit shell design.

Q-5)  Carlson has only been developing civil software since 2007.
I heard peoples at Carlson for help and received the following in response:

"Bruce Carlson began developing his software for the mining industry in 1983. By 1984, the program was able to extract profiles and cross-sections, calculate volumes and design road profiles. 3D Surface viewing abilities have been available in Carlson Software since the early 1990’s.

                Carlson developed the stand-alone Carlson Survey program in 1996 and in 1999 Autodesk contracted to market and sell a version of it called “Autodesk Field Survey”. Autodesk did away with Field Survey after a few years and Carlson migrated most users over to Carlson Survey where it has grown to become a favorite of surveyors."

Various civil features were organized as modules in a package called SurvCAD that was released in 1989. The civil engineering routines were renamed as Carlson Civil in 2006.

The first Hydrology module for Carlson was released in 1993. It was re-packaged as Carlson Hydrology in 2006.

Carlson Hydrology was the first and, I believe, is still the only H & H software to function entirely within the DWG-environment.

  
Q-6)  Carlson may have been used by multiple companies in India, but not used by big companies in mining industry.
As far as our personal experience, I’ve only been working with Carlson Software for a couple of years and companies I work with tend to have 25-30 users. I found & can personally say that I have seen or knew few industries who have moved to or are in the process of moving to Carlson.

Q-7)  Carlson Software does not support the full product lifecycle–Concept to Completion.
Carlson has the product lifecycle covered better than any other software firm in existence.

                Carlson Software has data collection, survey processing, civil design, hydrology, GIS, construction material takeoff & machine control software.

Q-8)  Carlson Software doesn’t have the support in place to adequately support its users.
 
Carlson provides free technical support directly out of their Maysville, KY and Boston, MA offices. We heard Bruce Carlson, founder of the Carlson Software say that keeping tech support free and in-house ensures that their software will remain easy-to-use and that the company will always be responsive to the wishes of their customers.

                If a bug or other problem with the software is encountered and logged into Carlson’s tech support department, the corrected files will be emailed to you as soon as the programmers develop the fix. Periodically a collection of the updated files will be released to all users as a maintenance patch. These updates are available to all users whether or not they are under a maintenance contract with Carlson.

Q-9)  Does Carlson Mining have blast design facility for open cast & underground mining module.

Currently, we developed our advance 3D interactive blast design module for the mining industries & it's under trial.

                In India, we have  announced officially our blasting module in the month of August, 2015 & showed it to one of the pioneer in Indian coal mining industry, i.e, SCCL, Telanagna.

Q-10)  In the Underground Mine Design module, does it have stopes designing facility.

Underground mine design module does not have the ability to design stopes, however we have an advance underground solids routines and circular ramps designing.

Q-11)  In Carlson Surface & Underground module, Does Carlson have mine scheduling with short, medium and long term facilities.

Reply: Yes Carlson Surface & Underground module, support all three. We can model by time period such as small as a shift, or as large as a year. (Including by day, week, month, quarter, or year, and by custom amounts that can be any amount).