Welcome blog followers! My name is Rick Ellis. I have been involved with the Civil/Survey/Mapping industry and Autodesk products since the early 90s in a variety of roles including as a Civil designer and CAD Manager for a multidisciplinary engineering firm, as the Technical Services Manager and Civil Application Engineer for an Autodesk reseller, and most recently as founder and President of Cadapult Software Solutions where I get to focus specifically on clients technical needs without the pressure or conflict of selling them software or meeting sales quotas. In short my job is to help clients get the most out of their design software investment through training, consulting services, mentoring and support. I am also the author of several books on AutoCAD Civil 3D, AutoCAD Map 3D, and Land Desktop. My experaince with Civil engineering software started with DCA and continued through Softdesk, Land Desktop, and now Civil 3D which I have been working with since before the pre-release version in 2004.

Being involved in the industry on both the end user/ production side as well as the training, consulting and author side has given me a unique perspective which allows me to provide real world, practical solutions and examples to my clients. As an author I quickly learned the writing a book is not as easy as it looks and that process takes you to a whole new level of understanding of the software or what ever topic it is that you are writing about. The ironic part is that I never set out or intended to be an author. As a kid at school I always hated English class and liked math and science. However, as an instructor teaching classes on Civil 3D Map 3D and Land Desktop I became increasingly frustrated at the lack of material available to use in my class as well as with it’s quality. So I started writing my own. One thing lead to another and now the Digging Into… book series includes books for AutoCAD Civil 3D, AutoCAD Map 3D and Land Desktop along with being the namesake for this blog.

As a trainer, consultant, and author I have had the privilege of meeting and working with some great people across the US and around the world at organizations both large and small both public and private. But whether it is working one on one with a person at a small company or teaching a class to a group of 300+ at Autodesk University one of the most rewarding parts of my job is seeing the light go on for someone that is learning something new or helping them solve a problem that they have been struggling with for a long time.

Now that you have a little information about my professional history I should give you a little information about this blog. The blog will be a little more informal than our corporate website.  For those of you that may follow our monthly newsletter, don’t worry, it is not going away. The blog is here to provide a more interactive place for people to find information, post comments and leave feedback. Since this is a more informal forum I would like to hear your opinions, and you will probably hear some of mine. I live about 35 miles south of Portland Oregon with my wonderful wife Kate and our 3 kids Courteney, Luke and Tom. I enjoy spending time with my family and traveling with them as schedules permit. I also enjoy coaching Luke and Tom’s basketball and baseball teams and have taken both of their baseball teams to the State Playoffs with Luke’s team winning both County and State Championships in 2008 while Tom’s team won the County Championship in 2009.

If you would like to contact me directly, please use our contact us form and select "general feedback", or call me at (503) 829-8929.  I always appreciate hearing from you!