Upgrading to Civil 3D...general question 1

[hydroponder]

For those of you who have made the transition from LDD to C3D, did you attend courses to learn the new operating system? My reseller offers a fundamentals course and a styles and standards course that I am thinking of attending. However, due to the relatively slow economy right now, I have also thought of diving into C3D on my own and try to learn it and set it all up. Has anyone done this? If so, how did it go? Any pointers?

For those that have taken the courses, are they worth it? I am in the civil engineering industry and generally work on site development. Thanks.

 

[youngEIT]

when i started to get into civil 3D, i basically dove into it myself. i got a lot of help from the civil 3D webcast series, that you can find at:

http://www.adskmedia.com/civilwebcasts/archive.php

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/item?siteID=123112&id=8894365

these free webcasts got me up to speed to utilize civil 3D for a lot of general tasks that i used to to with LDD before (points, surfaces, alignments, to name a few). also, when you start working with civil 3D, make sure your starting template is something like NCS LDT (imperial).dwt or so, and NOT acad.dwt. civil 3D ships with quite a few templates which house a lot of styles, so, you do not have to start from scratch.apart from that, make sure you always have your toolspace open when you are working with civil 3D (type showts if you do not see it), since you will be spending a lot of time in it! the webcasts helped me not have a steep learning curve; and once you start working with civil 3D, i guarantee you will not go back to LDD. hope this helps.good luck!