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Civil 3D (2016) Traverse Adjustments and .FBK files
Hello all, I’ve been lurking around here for a while, first time posting here.
I’ve been at my new company for just a hair over five months now and I find myself banging my head against the wall all the time trying to get the hang of using Civil3D 2016. It never seems to end, I know a lot of people say it’s just someones unwillingness to learn how to really use Civil3D, personally I think it is far less intuitive than Carlson, which is where my experience lies, I’m not looking for a debate, I’m just trying to learn how to use the software I’m provided. I’ve wasted a phenomenal amount of time trying to figure out how to even analyze a traverse loop our field crew has run recently, much less adjust it.
From what I’m reading as well as multiple tutorials I’ve come across, the best way to do this seems to be exporting a .fbk file from our field crew’s Topcon FC5000 data collector with Magnet Field and then importing said .fbk file into a new drawing file as a standard import event. In fairness, this is the first time I have used .fbk files, but each and every time I do this I get some sort of error, something along the lines of “(insert file name) Line 37 Error: Direction already exists.” Like I said, fieldbook files are new to me, so I may not know exactly what I’m looking for, but I’m not personally seeing anything that stands out in said file as a problem.
I spent years manually entering angles and distances into notepad to create a batch file to run through COGOPC software from the late ’80s, and then running compass adjustments on traverse, this stuff has me stumped and the help menu and error messages are utterly useless. No one currently at this company has done a traverse adjustment in nearly a decade or more, so they’ve been of no help with this stuff. Does anyone have any tips or tricks? Can someone tell me what I’m missing?? The website won’t let me upload the .fbk file, but I’m including a .txt version of it.
Thanks in advance, any help would be a godsend at this point.
-Boone
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13 Replies
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I started with Softdesk in 1997 and have graduated from than to LDD, and now to C3d. I’ve worked 6 different jobs in that time, in 3 states. I’ve worked with dozens of surveyors and technicians in that time, who themselves came from the 4 corners of the survey universe. Not one of them ever tried to adjust their traverses using fdk and Softdesk/LDD/C3d.
I have posted questions very much like yours to this board over the years and have had people insist that it can be done, and that they do it regularly. But I have never seen it done. The fact that your post has been up for nearly a full day with no response says something.
I use StarNet. My many employers have always been willing to buy it for me if they didn’t have it already (except one case where they were using LGO for the same purpose).
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Civil 3d is a pretty good design piece of software (I use it everyday for civil engineering projects).
It is a pretty poor survey piece of software. Everyone I know, no matter the firm, uses an exterior adjustment software and usually uses Civil3d for the field-to-finish (if they use Civil 3D at all, that is).
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Civil3d is not a friendly to traverse adjustments. I think i used it once 5 years ago. It can be done, it just requires a very specifically structured set of data.
Any adjustments should be made prior to introducing the data to Civil3d. Most use StarNet or TBC for adjustments.
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I’ll admit, these are exactly the responses I was expecting prior to posting, thank you all for confirming this. I truly think that the surveying side of Civil 3d was an afterthought.
I essentially made the same post on Autodesk’s own forum and have only gotten a single response, from another user, which has been of no help at all.
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If you do alot of adjustments, and it sounds like you do, i believe star-net would be your most functional choice. We simply do not adjust our traverses anymore, if it closes within a few hundredths, it is more than adequate for our work. Obviously everyone’s mileage varies on this subject.
Civil3d is great for many things, but definitely not traverse adjustments.
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I count on one hand how many Traverse loops I have adjusted in the last 5 years. All of which were done in the DC…not C3D.
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In LDD I could get the traverse adjustment to work but not in civil 3d
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Some days it is best to download the original raw data and then apply all the necessary ‘Angle balance” and “Closing Method” and “Transformation corrections” on the Data Collector and then download that corrected data file.
0.02
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If the data is correct a StarNet review & adjustment takes just a few minutes. If it isn’t, whatever time I spend to fix problems is worth it. I rarely run a simple loop traverse.
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As Mark hinted the traverse adjustment functionality in civil 3d is a direct descendant of the SoftDesk/LDD routines and has inherited all of the crappy implementation of its antecedents As WA/ID surveyor said it requires a VERY SPECIFICALLY formatted set of input data to function correctly. Given the correct input it will adjust a traverse and the sideshots but it’s really not worth the effort unless you don’t have any other alternative. Some of the key formatting secrets are
1. No sideshots from 1st set up I usually “traverse” from my original backsight to my first occupation to avoid this scenario.
2. Closing points must have the same point number as they did when they were first located, not a new one. I usually field collect with new point numbers so I can inverse my misclosure in the field then edit the designations in the fieldbook in the office.
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@boonemd Saludos… no sé si entendí bien tu problema, pero lo que puedo leer en la linea 37 es que tienes un angulo vertical tomado con la cara inversa del equipo, o sea, en F2, no es correcto que pongas F1, cámbialo a F2 a ver si este es el problema, si no es que ya lo habrás solucionado a estas fechas. debe ser: F2 VA 300 0.000100 275.115 87.031900 “PT1-CHK” saludos desde Venezuela.
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I’m the biggest pro Carlson/anti C3D guy here, but prior to the early 2000’s, I used LDD/Softdesk, etc. I didn’t find the survey and adjustment routines to be all that horrible. Creating linework wasn’t that bad either.
That said, I couldn’t begin to help you now with C3D. And I hate the few times I have to even open up the program.
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Just to save you all the necessity to go to google translate…..
Greetings … I do not know if I understood your problem well, but what I can read on line 37 is that you have a vertical angle taken with the inverse side of the equipment, that is, in F2, it is not correct that you put F1, change it to F2 to see if this is the problem, if it is not that you will have already solved it at this time. It should be: F2 VA 300 0.000100 275.115 87.031900 “PT1-CHK” Greetings from Venezuela.
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