Autocad Training

[Paul Barton]

Rob at actioncad (he is an arbtalk member) in cheshire used to offer arb specific training I believe. I looked into it several years ago, never did it. I get Rob to do my plans instead, as his are WAY better then mine

 

Tel: 0800 009 6120

Skype: ActionCAD.Rob

email: [email protected]

 

ActionCAD Limited

172 Delamere Street,

Winsford,

Cheshire.

CW7 2NA

 

ActionCAD.co.uk

 

I can second that - Rob provides a great service. I never thought about asking him for training, that's a good idea.

[RobArb]

Scott, ArborCAD will only work AutoCAD 2013 and below (we've got it working on 2014, but only on 1 computer) as Chris Skellern has completely wiped his hands of it.

[john k]

Wouldn't a GIS package be better than CAD for tree surveys? Has anyone tried QGIS? It's free and seems reasonably user friendly.

[ScottF]

Scott, ArborCAD will only work AutoCAD 2013 and below (we've got it working on 2014, but only on 1 computer) as Chris Skellern has completely wiped his hands of it.

 

I know and I'm quite happy working with it with 2013 (which is what we run). Arborcad in its current form is available very cheap at the moment for the reasons mentioned above, but I still think it's better than the competition for its simplicity and non-invasiveness of Autocad (a real issue with one product in particular), having tried them.

 

Last time I heard from Chris he was working on a revised, integrated version of Arborcad which integrates Arbortrail and is to be designed to run on Windows 8 tablets. If he manages to do it I think it'll be excellent as I also use Arbortrail and I find nothing can touch it in terms of the way it plots RPAs and crown spreads live on-screen, calculates RPAs in accordance with 5837:2012 (including multistems) and provides them as radii and areas automatically and is easily configurable on the fly to deal with site-specific conditions. Also, the tabular outputs are the cleanest by far of anything I've used (and I've used most things). When I've collected data with arboritrail i simply save it as an Arborcad file and drop the trees onto the base topo in one click, irerespective of the number of trees.

[ScottF]

Wouldn't a GIS package be better than CAD for tree surveys? Has anyone tried QGIS? It's free and seems reasonably user friendly.

 

We use QGIS to output mapping and tabular data for all of our GPS-based surveys, although you still have to collect the data in a suitable software first and then output them as shapefiles. If we're doing safety surveys the point data just needs to be labelled and output to paper scales. If it's a 5837 survey we have to add another set of steps via Autocad and Arborcad to get the colour coding, crown spread etc etc dealt with.

[Paul Barton]

Have dabbled with QGIS so can't claim to know its full capabilities. But, it has done everything that I have asked of it very well so far, and it's free.

 

A friend in the know about GIS highly recommends it - apparently some local authrorities are even using it to save money on ESRI subscriptions.

[Island Lescure]

Free QGIS course. The Water Network | by AquaSPE

[Paul Barton]

Nice one Island.