Funny. People almost never call and ask if their Civil 3D Templates and Civil 3D Standards have reached their end of life. Should our Civil 3D Templates, Civil 3D Styles, and other Civil 3D resources have an expiration date? Do we expect the latest Civil 3D Release Upgrade or Civil 3D Update will make the call on the field?
Wonder of wonders. Old Civil 3D Templates and CAD Standards never seem to die. They appear to be the technological miracle of our modern age. They only get recycled. If we invest a bunch of time into something as time consuming as a Civil 3D template, we are not inclined to abandon that work.
True. A good number of people purchase a Framework for Civil 3D product - Templates Only or Jump Kit and go with that. Many of these people find themselves in a situation where they have no existing Civil 3D resources to start with. For example, they recently started a new firm or whoever built and maintained their previous Civil 3D Standards resources has left them in the high and dry.
Civil 3D Templates at the End of Life
Kid you not. I recently ran into a blast from the past. Someone sent me an old “Runs Like Land Desktop” Civil 3D template they were still using to perform civil engineering production project work in a recent release of Civil 3D. “Why change if it still works?”
Hey. I get it. I personally choose to drive older used cars and not purchase new ones. I have no reason to want a car that talks to me or increases my screen time. Eheh.
Total Cost of Ownership
The all too obvious point being that someday the tool simply won’t work or rather the cost of using and maintaining the nasty thing will exceed the cost of replacement. But that’s far from the complete story as most of us have learned the hard way from experience.
Of course, the true Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for any technology product is all about our investment in staff manhours. Since those numbers are from our perspective tend to be a shot in the dark, we all generally believe staying with what we have is less expensive than doing that pencil, planning, and execution work and not liking the often painful results.
The techno-vendors like Autodesk want us to focus on those magical…
Lost Opportunity Costs
If we invest in the vendor’s new stuff, we get to receive the benefit of increased opportunities to get more work, deliver different types of projects, more potential profits, saved man-hours, etc.
Most folks in Civil 3D Land take that Autodesk talk with a considerable splash of doubtful salt. Our current set of business goals often have almost nothing to do with Autodesk’s assumptions about our current or long-term goals and/or our real-world opportunities.
As a parts manufacturer of Civil 3D Styles, Civil 3D Templates, and all the other necessary Civil 3D resources we have a different perspective. We seek to make that on-going effort to build and maintain all those many Civil 3D resources as easy for you as possible.
Why a Framework for Civil 3D?
You can employ our Framework products to replace a production Civil 3D Template that’s seen better days. Let’s face it deleting unwanted Styles from a fully integrated Templates Only Civil 3D template is a cakewalk relative to starting from scratch or reengineering an existing one that almost works.
Employ the vast Civil 3D Style libraries included with Jump Kit to add production tested and proven resources to your existing templates. People are often shocked to discover that Jump Kit already includes fully-integrated, specialty solutions for many kinds of civil and survey projects.
Our famous Standards Management Spreadsheet Tools even allow you to tweak and customize our supplied Civil 3D resource libraries to meet your current needs and expectations. Wonder of wonders. Those Spreadsheet tools can indeed be modified to help you make and maintain your own Framework for Civil 3D
Funny. One way or another we end up with something like the Framework or our Civil resources all too quickly reach their end of useful life.
Make Civil 3D Work Better
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