MicroSurvey CAD 2024

MicroSurvey brings intuitive calculation tools for land surveyors to popular drafting platforms, including IntelliCAD, BricsCAD, and AutoCAD. The 2024 release brings many fixes and improvements, focusing on the tools you use most, and a fix for issues working with drawings saved to a OneDrive backup location.

What’s New in Version 24.0

What’s New

• MicroSurvey CAD can now be installed on a virtual machine.
• Label Styles for the Curve Labels have been added, previously there was only a single option for curve labels on the MsAnnotate ribbon.

What’s Improved

• We improved the licensing dialog for network licenses to grey out options which cannot be used when a license has been checked out for offline usage.
• Bearing and Distance label style indexes have been increased from 5 to 10.
• Global Mapper has been updated for improved performance and loading times.

Bug Fixes

• Drawings which were saved to a file path backed up by Microsoft OneDrive would improperly close due to unexpected locking of files. OneDrive will no longer negatively impact the saving and closing of drawings, causing the Drawing Recovery Wizard to appear when opening those drawings.
• The FASTAREA command was not working, it now works with an output formatting improvement over previous behaviour.
• The Lot Closure Routine when using Bearings would show some curve values in Azimuth.
• We improved how cloud-based network licenses are handled to reduce the frequency of problems some users experienced.
• Spell Check could not find the spelling dictionary.
• COGO was not computing the correct direction using the + or – options. For example: 1..2 <return> + <return> 90 <return> would only use the original 1..2 direction.
• When computing volumes from surfaces, the command line output had many extra blank lines included.
• Checking out a cloud-based network license for offline use would not reliably work.
• The ARCTEXT button was missing from the MSsAnnotate ribbon.
• The Progress Bar would always remain visible after a previous process had completed.

Known Issues

• MS_RESCALE will update aspects of polyline labels to the currently set distance and bearing label style which is the same as in the MicroSurvey CAD 2022.1 release.

Important Notes

Migrating your MicroSurvey CAD Settings Between Versions

Most MicroSurvey users have customized MicroSurvey CAD to suit their workflows, CAD Standards and regional requirements.  All customizations are stored as settings files that can be transferred from an older release to a newer release, or between workstations within a company.  Please review this article to ease the process of updating from MicroSurvey CAD 2023 (or 2022.1) to 2024 and to optimize your setup to increase efficiency for all future updates.

Activating or Updating your USB License Key

Software licenses are stored on the USB key.  These must be activated after a new purchase, and usually require manual updates when new versions of MicroSurvey CAD are released.

The process is the same for both; click here for detailed instructions.

The USB License Manager program is automatically installed with MicroSurvey CAD; it can be found in the MicroSurvey CAD folder in your start menu.  Open it with your USB key inserted and click the “Update Key with New Information” button.

You must have an internet connection to use the USB License Manager.  You may download the program and install it on another computer to update keys when corporate policy and firewalls prevent access from your work network.

Annual Maintenance Subscription (AMS) Program

If your AMS has expired, you may not be able to update your key to the current version of MicroSurvey CAD.

For a detailed explanation of the AMS program and how we use product numbers and USB keys to license our software, please review the following article.

Each key has a different AMS plan, so multiple keys may not have the same expiry date.

You can confirm your AMS expiry date by reviewing the About screen found in the Help menu.

If your AMS has expired, you can phone us at 1-800-668-3312 or 1-250-707-0000 to renew it. Without a current maintenance subscription plan, you may not be able to update your key to work with the new version.

MicroSurvey License Server for Network License Users

If you have purchased a network license, you must download and install a copy of the MicroSurvey Network License software on your intended license server computer.

A password is required to install the License Server.

MicroSurvey License Portal for Floating License Users

If you have purchased a floating license, you may visit our license page to review usage statistics on your license.

After purchase, you will be asked to create a login for the portal.

Log in to the portal, click "Licenses & Activations", then the desired license to review its details.

System Requirements

MicroSurvey CAD 2024 is compatible with Windows 10 and Windows 11. 

A free USB port is required for the USB License Key (local workstation or network server)

Full administrator rights are required to install MicroSurvey CAD 2024, but it can be run by limited user accounts

For detailed system requirements and recommendations, please review this online article.

Software Requirements

MicroSurvey CAD Ultimate and Studio require Leica Cyclone Viewer (free download) at a minimum to work with point clouds.  MicroSurvey CAD will be fully functional with an unlicensed version.

Licenses of Leica Cyclone Publisher, Publisher Pro, or Leica Jetstream may be used to access additional functionality.

Leica CLM (client license manager) is required to license Leica Cyclone or Jetstream.

Please visit leica-geosystems.com to download any additional Leica products listed above.  A registered account is required.

Run as Administrator

You must run the program at least once elevated with "Run as administrator" access

Clicking “Run” from the installation package does this automatically

If this step is skipped, you may run as administrator by doing the following:

Right click on the MicroSurvey CAD 2024 icon.

Choose "Run as administrator".

Select "Yes" on the "User Account Control" dialog when prompted to allow the program to make changes to your computer.

After this step is complete, you may run the program from any user account on the computer, even if they do not have administrative privileges.