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New release of Trimble Access
Good people,
Thought some of you might like to know that there is a new version of Trimble Access (v2022.10) available.
The big new feature is feature coded symbols and linetypes. You can now see in your controller what your job will look like back in Trimble Business Centre.
Access also now supports IFC and BIM files on Android controllers.
And you can export to LandXML
Thanks to the help of some folks here (350RocketMike and JohnHamilton in particular) we have fixed a number of small annoyances.
There is a full list of enhancements here… https://help.trimblegeospatial.com/TrimbleAccessReleaseNotes/en/2022.10.htm
Hope you find them useful
Cheers
Jim
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86 Replies
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BRACE FOR IMPACT!!!
Jk
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Nice to see there’s improvement in the F2F coding.
I would like to see an option added for defining a set of parallel lines through measured points as with the inroads TMPL code where each parallel line can have it’s own feature code.
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That export .csv, by blocks of name range, is helpful.
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That looks like they are finally getting caught up to this century lol. Awesome S I am just now building a feature code library.
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And thanks, Jim for looking into my problem and not giving up!
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Waiting out some heavy rain, this is exactly the post I was hoping to find on here. Thanks for the update!
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This is great. Several items on my wish list have been addressed. (Probably not due to me sending them to my dealer, I’ve no idea whether anything gets sent on to development, but I’m stoked that so many upgrades and fixes have been added!)
The FXL symbolization and layer colors is fantastic, I’m going to dedicate some time to updating our FXL to reflect our standard blocks. Then on to the much more difficult task of actually getting the crews to use it…
Renaming media files is huge – I will happily put away my custom stylesheets for renaming photos and modifying the JXLs to reflect updated names.
The Station Intervals options is going to be great for our corridor staking crews. I developed a custom stylesheet for generating a pre-made cutsheet from RXLs that largely mimics the interval selection options; paired with this new option we’ll save even more time staking roads.
THANK THE LORD the target lock mode is now stored in the JXL! Drove me nuts trying to troubleshoot raw data without knowing what mode the crew was in.
Great to see we have BIM/IFC functions in Android! (Now if only the USA would get with the 21st century and start using more IFC/BIM in design…)
Thanks for all the hard work Jim! Access was already top dog for functionality and versatility, this only makes it better.
“…people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.” -Neil Postman -
Glad to see it shouldn’t be switching to passive mode anymore when I check backsight.
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The big new feature is feature coded symbols and linetypes. You can now see in your controller what your job will look like back in Trimble Business Centre.
I remember I set this up in Carlson SurvCe about 5 years ago. It was neat but kind of one of those things you do to kill time on a rainy day. I’ll have to look into it and see if I can set it up in our styles.
This reminds me of another wishlist item for Access– if I remember right in SurvCE I was able to define a line and then offset it in topo mode which helped me walk a nice grid for doing ground shots on large parcels. In Access it seems like I can only do this in stakeout mode (after I first create a line and then store it), and people who work in TBC tell me points shot in stakeout mode are difficult to manipulate and very much prefer points shot in measure mode.
It would be nice if I could quickly define and offset a line in measure or measure codes mode and just kind of have that in the background for navigation purposes. If this already exists then I’d be curious to hear how to set it up, and if not then it would be cool to have it added sometime.
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We were told the same thing about storing in staking in fieldgenius, but I was told it should be fine in access. I will make sure to avoid doing this for anything important as I’m sure it would have created a problem eventually.
I’m looking forward to being able to draw lines as I go (like we were able to with fieldgenius for 10 years). Normally I spend a lot of time using the key in line function which makes you press a lot of buttons just to get a line between 2 points.
Now I get to annoy my project manager by updating access which will force him to update TBC.
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Yes, your grid is on the ToDo list.
In the meantime you can use ‘Stakeout line’ to two points and work with the Station and Offset.
Or you can key all the lines and use the Snap toolbar to give you the intersections.
You should also let your TBC guys know there is a function in there that converts stake-out records to ordinary points.
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As-staked points aren’t difficult to deal with in TBC, it’s just mildly annoying if they are not actually stake points. Trimble (reasonably enough) holds as-staked points at their design location and stores the deltas, until they are converted (if they need to be).
So if something is staked out, like a calculated boundary point, and then stored as a stake point, if one just dumps the project into TBC and then exports out the points, what gets exported is that original calc position, because as far as Access and TBC know, the operator intended to set a point at that calc position, not observe a monument.
It takes about 5-10 seconds to select all as-staked points in TBC and run the “convert as-staked points” command, which will then break that link to the design location and place points where they were actually observed. But it can get messy when the operator then has to merge those converted points with others, or if the job was begun on an assumed datum and then is post-processed to bring it to a projection. Again, not terrible, but just a bit tricky and not really in line with the ideal workflow.
Some crews stake out to station/offsets along road corridors in order to get their cross-sections during a topo, but when they do, it’s going to hold that design station & offset, plus a zero elevation (2D alignment is being staked) or that profile elevation (3D alignment being staked) until the stake points are converted in TBC.
As far as staking out lines or grids during a topo, Access allows the operator to have “stakeout” and “measure” dialogs open at the same time. Start staking out, then start a Measure Points/Codes routine – just don’t exit out of the stakeout beforehand.
Flip back to the stakeout dialog, move to where you need to be for the first point, flip back to Measure Points, observe, flip back to stakeout and keep on truckin’.
“…people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.” -Neil Postman -
This seems like a good opportunity to pose a question. Typically I use the measure points/topo/control/rounds, ect.. Could someone elucidate a bit on the measure codes and where and how this is most applicable? Thx Willy
Willy -
This seems like a good opportunity to pose a question. Typically I use the measure points/topo/control/rounds, ect.. Could someone elucidate a bit on the measure codes and where and how this is most applicable? Thx Willy
It just lets you create a panel of buttons that basically automatically types the codes for you. It can help speed up topo-ing things, especially if it’s repetitive coding like cross sections.
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The biggest issue I have with the staking routine is that if you store a point as a name that already exists, it doesn’t tell you it already exists and give the usual options to overwrite, average, rename etc…it just stores it where the old point was, even if if it’s 300 meters away, without any warning of any kind. To me that’s a glitch even if Trimble wants to pretend it’s normal behavior.
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Measure Codes used to be solid in pre-2017 Access, and now it’s awesome. Fastest way to run anything more complex than single-code observations, and the only way to run urban topos IMO.
The short version is, you pick your grid size (3×3, 4×4, etc) and populate it with any combination of line or point codes, in whatever order you want. Usually I just walk the site with the controller and input all the codes I will need, or at least the ones I will be using first or the most. You can always swap them out on the fly or create a new grid if you move to a different area.
Then you can simply walk around the site and tap on the codes to measure them. Use the plus and minus keys at the bottom for incrementing/decrementing line strings. It remembers and can find the next number up for a particular line code if you forget what your last one was.
You can set it up to auto-measure with a single tap, or send you to the measure points screen and wait for you to confirm before measuring. Then you can change to rapid, topo, observed control on the fly if you want. Auto-populate attributes or prompt each time if you want.
You can set it up to auto-advance through the grid. If you are doing cross-sectioning, use the zig-zag mode, and then you literally just have to click the Enter key for each feature. Once you observe the last string, it will keep that last code highlighted as you walk whatever your cross-section distance is down to go back the other way, then increment codes back the opposite direction as you keep tapping Enter.
If you want to observe additional features during cross sectioning, just add those to the grid but don’t include them in list of codes to zig-zag through. When you observe one of those non-cross-section codes, it will remember the last cross-section you were on and go back to it once that other observation is done. Super slick.
Don’t bother putting linework control codes in the grid though – just turn on the CAD toolbar and you can tap on the icons to begin/end lines, invoke curves, do a rectangle or circle, etc.
I don’t know our code list very well because the search by description function is in there, and I definitely don’t know our line control codes because I don’t need to. I just tap the correct icon and it finds whatever the equivalent code is and adds it to the field.
Use the multi-code key to code multiple features in the same point or add a custom code that’s not in the grid. Tap it again to go back to single code measurements.
The bottom line is, once you learn how to set it up the way you want it, it takes about 5 minutes to get it ready for a particular job, and then you’re off to the races. Someone running Measure Codes with the CAD toolbar will outpace someone running Measure Points every time. More than that, properly used it reduces the need for fixing codes in post-processing to virtually nil.
“…people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.” -Neil Postman -
Measure Codes used to be solid in pre-2017 Access, and now it’s awesome. Fastest way to run anything more complex than single-code observations, and the only way to run urban topos IMO.
Just wait till you try it with Symbols & Linework turned on 🙂
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More than that, properly used it reduces the need for fixing codes in post-processing to virtually nil.
Eh, sorta.
There’s still quirky things like putting codes in the right order. For example, points with symbols (ie fire hydrants) need to be first in the string or they don’t work. Begin or end line codes need to be before PC and PT line codes or the curves don’t draw. I don’t know if these are TBC quirks or Civil 3D quirks but they’re things you’ll need to fix, until the field crew is made aware anyway, even if a proper measure code panel is set up.
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I don’t know if these are TBC quirks or Civil 3D quirks
Must be – you made me go check the new Access to be sure.
But as Rover83 points out “the much more difficult task of actually getting the crews to use it…” 🙂
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@bstrand In TBC, highlight all the as-staked points, right-click, convert to regular point (forget what they call it). It leaves a bunch of items behind like 1000-1 where 1000 is the point name but you can easily delete those. May need to hit the red ball (bottom of screen).
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