Model-This.com

Outside of the Southwest Espresso User Group meeting in Phoenix a few years back this was my first user conference. I came here expecting to be blown away like Randall Rath blew my mind every time I saw him speak. I expected to meet people who would make me take a long look at the quality and procedures that I employ in daily practice. I wanted to be presented skills and methods beyond which I can develop on my own. I wanted to be presented ideas and questions that made me stare at the ceiling, like Randall did in the Little Rock VBA class. I wanted to be shown things that weren’t in the manual or the help files. I wanted to be showed how to make Carlson’s Civil and Machine packages perform to levels beyond which they are advertised to, like how Randall made AutoCAD sing every time I saw him write any code for it. I’ve been disappointed. I find my skill level to probably be on par with the instructors that I’ve had. Short of small time saving tricks I feel like I’m left a bit disappointed.

Not that this User Group Conference didn’t have it’s up sides. I did walk away with more than I arrived with. Maybe I was expecting too much. Maybe the people at Carlson have done their job to well. Maybe the greatness of their software has become mundane to me over the years in which I have used it. I don’t doubt for a minute that there was a lot of people present who walked away satisfied, maybe I was just wanting something unrealistic. Maybe the Carlson manuals are too good, maybe they do express the completeness of the software’s capabilities. All in all though, this was their first event and if they have another I’ll be there.

Now a bit more detailed picking…

Overall I am really concerned with the trivial nature by which the presenters threw data together on the screen and said this is a finished model. I’ve been down that path, when you start blindly triangulating data and pushing it to a machine you get errors.

In the “Surfaces” class in which I sat the presenter made a point of saying “…contours should be treated as output, not as input.” I agree with this statement on the surface, when solid design data is present, I feel as the contours are there to give an instant visual representation of the site and that the contours should only be used as a means of ‘checking’ one’s self. On the other hand though, when contours and spot elevations are the only data present I feel that they can not be ignored.

In one presentation, the presenter showed a drawing consisting of spot elevations along the curb and contours though out the site, no other design data. The presenter then proceeded to show off Carlson’s very savvy text to elevation commands, and built the model from this data. When asked if this was a valid machine model the presenter replied in the affirmative. I never saw him put the contour data in the data set used to create the model, may be he did and I missed it but I was left thinking “What if that data reflected a vertical curve in the parking lot?” Not that he lied when saying it was a valid model, it was, No doubt about it, but was it correct?

Now I plan to read through the conference CD and see what nuggets of information might lay in wait.