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New to Everything Looking for advice
Posted by TWSandy on March 11, 2022 at 5:20 pmHello Everyone,
I work for a welding shop and we recently purchased a total station / scanner, I am looking for some online classes that I could take while still working my full time job. I have little to no experience with anything related to surveying (journeyman welder by trade), and i basically want to take some classes online so that I can use this tool we purchased to its full potential. Currently we have mostly been using it for the scanner portion of the tool. I would like to be able to confidently go to a construction site and lay out gridlines, elevations, etc.
The company that we bought the tool from has done a great job for a introduction to how to use the tool, I was hoping I could find something online to learn more.
I found a course that was online that my local tech school offered, but they cancelled the certificate. I am now at a loss at what I should be looking for.
If it matters, I live in Alberta, Canada.
field-dog replied 2 years, 6 months ago 11 Members · 16 Replies -
16 Replies
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I’m thinking that, for this, you need hands-on instruction rather than on-line. One place you might check out is the union that represents the construction workers in Alberta. They often have classes for such things. But I think that you will find that welders make about as good surveyors as surveyors make welders.
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There are hundreds of Youtubes on setting up an instrument and doing layouts, etc. Unfortunately, a majority of them teach comically bad practice. But there are some good ones in there also.
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If i need something welded i go to a person who does this. Should be the same vice versa.
Never understood these prectices because they think they can save a few $$$. At the end this will be an expensive purchase because it’ll be sitting idle in the box after a while…
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Is that video for real or is it intended as a spoof?
Trib-ee-ark ? Stadd-e-a? Stomp the legs into the ground and put the instrument on before getting anywhere near desired height? If you have an optical plummet, why bother with a plumb bob? (teach the leg adjustment method of centering.) Never shows the plumb bob over the mark. The optical plummet didn’t look right.
If you want a good horizontal angle, don’t you read something tighter than the estimated center of a leveling rod that was only plumbed by eye? The rod focus is even worse than the reticule (reticule focus might be a camera problem). If they only are assigned to get the horizontal angle, why are they bothering with a leveling rod and vertical angles?
Why aim at HI on the rod? That degrades stadia accuracy. If you wanted to get elevation difference, would you use their procedure or would you set the instrument sight line to horizontal and read the rod (face 1 and face 2 of course)?
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Start with some basic survey text books so you get a better handle on the math requirements because without really understanding the principles and methods involved, the tools are a bit useless. Bit like me picking up a mig welder and watching some YouTube videos on welding and then offering professional welding services. What could possibly go wrong? ???
Willy -
We are not intending on offering a a professional service, we purchased this tool for our own reference / use. When we put up a building we go do a site scan / site measure prior to the fabrication of our steel, to ensure our steel is going to fit with existing site conditions. Judging by the responses I think I should have worded this differently. Our welding company is not offering any sort of service besides our standard structural steel business. We are strictly using the total station to take measurements and do layout of our steel. We are not planning on offering a surveyor service as we are not surveyors.
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That video would make a solid court case for the refund of tuition. It is sad they are teaching these procedures and charging students who don’t have any way of knowing how poor the lesson is.
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Posted by: @twsandy
We are not intending on offering a a professional service, we purchased this tool for our own reference / use….
I understand. There are a lot of construction subcontractors in the “MEP” field doing it these days. Construction tool suppliers like Hilti are selling rebranded Trimbles for the purpose. Usually the prime will have an LS set 3 or 4 control points on a building deck and the subs layout the many details off of those.
But I have also heard of a number of of these same outfits terminating the experiment because of troubles training and retaining competent users of said equipment. Some of the bigger dogs have enough projects to make it worth their while, but smaller outfits struggle with it.
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Posted by: @bill93
Why aim at HI on the rod? That degrades stadia accuracy. If you wanted to get elevation difference, would you use their procedure or would you set the instrument sight line to horizontal and read the rod (face 1 and face 2 of course)?
I’ve never done stadia for pay, but I did work with people who had. My understanding is that you aimed at the HI and recorded the zenith angle. That removes the Hi/Hr difference from your elevation equation. Then you dialed the bottom hair to the nearest even foot mark and read the top hair to easily get the interval, and thus the distance.
And if the site lent itself to running a level line you wouldn’t be doing stadia at all. You would be levelling for elevation.
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@twsandy Your wording is fine. Some folks get territotial.
Any decent instrument will need service eventually. Most vendors thst provide service have relationships with trainers. As many have said, read some elementary texts to learn the lingo and some background. As long as you keep it to simple construction you’ll probably be fine..
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I spent a few years when I was young pipe-fitting and welding for portable gas refineries so I think I have a good handle on what you want it for. It’s a plan intensive profession, welders and pipe-fitters are expert measures so that tool could be of great service. You aren’t using it for boundary. I understand perfectly why the bosses wanted the tool and if I were you I’d dive right into it. I’m guessing that like where I worked that there’s the grunts doing the work and an office full of engineers, draftsman and office staff turning out plan sets.
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Posted by: @lurker
That video would make a solid court case for the refund of tuition.
I remember my earliest efforts at setting up the instrument in college. I wasn’t any better. Probably worse. The crime is recording it and presenting it as training material. Then leaving it up for all the world to see for 13 years. I learned more during my first week on the job than I did in 12 semester hours of surveying classes.
“….To my astonishment I was informed on leaving college that I had studied navigation!??why, if I had taken one turn down the harbor I should have known more about it. …” H.D. Thoreau, Walden
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Good for you trying to learn this. Get whatever you can out of YouTube. Read the manual. The instrument has a distance error and an angular error so everything gets worse the more you stretch it. If you??re combining multiple scans and using multiple setups or doing precise layout?? this stuff can get complicated. Surveyors aren??t geniuses but they usually have the benefit of learning from a mentor or their own mistakes. If the tool isn??t working for your needs, I bet you could find a surveyor who uses the same thing and will take your money to show you how they use it. I give props to anyone trying to learn something new, but the problem with being self taught is ya don??t know what ya don??t know.
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There??s a couple of different angles to your endeavor you??d need to focus on. Learning to set up the equipment and use the data collection software probably wouldn??t take that long with some good training. That??s the easy part. Understanding how the data is derived and manipulated and how to strategize the collection might take a bit longer through trial and error. Understanding the basic math helps tremendously. Once you have successfully collected that data either by scanning or total station now you now need to make sense out of it, get it into a finished product others can use, which will require some autoCAD finesse. That??s a completely different game and is likely going to take someone a while to learn from scratch without classes and mentoring. Give it your best shot. Nobody ever makes any significant progress without getting outside their comfort zone and raw perseverance. Twenty five years and at times I??m still trying to figure it all out. ????
Good luck!
Willy -
There is absolutely nothing wrong with buying something, and then learning to use it.
If you don’t mind me saying it, what brand is it? Leica has some philosophical, mechanical differences, as compared with Trimble, or Topcon. Suitability for purpose is affected by brand.
So, whatever brand it is, find somebody FAMILIAR with that brand, and it’s practical use for A given purpose, and get a 2 hour session with them. If it turns out good, do it again. There is alot to learn, and some is common, some is subjective by brand, and some is subjective by person, mostly both.
I’m a surveyor. Been that way for a long time. I take what I know for granted. But, what I don’t know is much bigger!
Go socialize with a few surveyors. Some of what we are isn’t written down. Osmosis is how you get it. Pedantic woods stompers, that’s what a surveyor often is.
Nate
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