Bye Bye Land Desktop - Hello Civil3D!!

How many of you work in a Civil (or AEC) related field? How many of you use Land Desktop? How many of you have moved to Civil3D? How many of you are trying to move to C3D but can't seem to get 'er done? Autodesk has officially announced the long expected demise of Land Desktop. What now?

Don't worry, your license of ALD (Autodesk Land Desktop) is still good and will work just fine. BUT (there's always a but), what if you come to a time when you have to update your software? You won't be able to. If you are on subscription with ALD, then maybe you need to review your contract. I'm not sure how Autodesk will handle that. Keep in mind that your subscription contract does indicate that there is no guarantee of a new release! If you just signed a three year subscription for Land Desktop, then, well, hmmmm.

What if you are in a situation where you don't use ALD but have set up an elaborate customization of routines, menus, tablets, blocks etc. to do your design and drafting work? This means that you need to start looking at Civil3D because your competition will be. Autodesk has reported several times that many Civil3D users see around a 33% (plus or minus of course) reduction in design drafting time. That means Civil3D companies can under bid you by 50%!! Can you compete with that? Where did I get 50%?

Lets say that it take $100 to do a job. If I use Civil3D, then I can do the job for 33% less. That means it will cost me $66 to do the job. $100 minus $66 is $34. $34 is about half (or 50%) of $66. If I do the job for $100 and my competition does it for $66, then I am making a bid on a job that is 50% higher than my competition !! I think that we would loose clients and eventually shut down. The other alternative is to reduce costs by 30%. How do you do that?

My point, even if you don't use Land Desktop, this will affect you.