Carlson Software Knowledge Base

Carlson 2024 includes changes that emphasize use of pre-defined projections.

Here are the reasons for this change:

• preparation for upcoming introduction of low distortion projections
• added support for EPSG projections
• removal of ambiguity in selection of NAD83 reference frame
• unification of projections used with SurvPC and CPC

Instead of controls you may have used previously in older versions of Carlson products, please pick "Pre-defined/Use-defined Projections" and make your selection there.

When opening a drawing set up using "State Plane 83" projection previously, you will be prompted to select between two specific NAD83 realizations. Most users working with contemporary data will likely want to select the 2011 realization, the most modern. No transformation will occur on your existing drawing and it will be backwards compatible with older versions of Carlson.

Using the 2011 NAD83 realization may mean that certain operations involving transforming Lat/Lon positions will apply a realization transformation unless the input data is in the same realization. Currently, there is a central setting for this located in Settings → Configure Carlson → Survey. If you change this setting to OFF no realization transformation will be performed. You can also set this setting to "Per Drawing" and control it in the Drawing Setup.

We intend in the future to provide per routine control for specifying datum/realization transformations to allow more granular application.