Basemaps in Survey Pro

I haven't tried this either, but my guess is that it won't work the way you hope.

If I recall correctly (and my wife says that I often do not), the image is stored as a separate attachment to the DXF - along with the image path - and not physically embedded in it as an entity.

Also if I recall, you can have multiple files visible as basemaps in a TDS job. In this case the DXF vectors as one basemap with the imagery as another (with a common projection of course). You can control the visibility of all basemaps and the display order so the vector map is on top of the imagery. Not what you want to do, but it should work.

Well, that's probably correct. In AutoCAD, the image manager within the DWG or DXF file displays the path to the image file, and the image only displays if that path can be resolved.

I did notice within the Technical Manual that TDS put together that loading the basemaps generally requires loading the image file within the same directory as the JOB file. Maybe that would allow the path reference contained in the DXF file to resolve to the image file. Although, the path will be different on the Nomad than it is on my PC.

I did it once, and it was a waste of time. It worked, but the screen size and quality is pretty limited for seeing very much. Give it a try, it wasn't that hard, but I can't remember how I did it, its been several years ago.

Thanks. Do you take images in the field today, using some other system, or is it just a waste of time? I've imported linework successfully using the DXF file and have found it helpful figuring out where I am on the screen. A bunch of points, without lines, is difficult to understand, for me at least.

David brings up a good point. The resolution of the imagery probably won't help much at the scale you will normally be working at in the field given the size of the display.

When we start working on mobile devices with a screen the size of an iPad, I'd revisit it.

If I recall, I loaded a Autocad drawing into the Ranger. It was a one time deal, just a experiment. At the time, we were using a older Ranger (200?). We now have one of the new Rangers, and maybe everything would show up better on the newer screen. I'm not sure.

I tried it once and it really slowed down the data collector and became useless to use. It was on a 5 mile long project, so that might of had something to do it. I never tried it on a smaller project.

Beer Legs jogged another memory... prior to loading a DXF on the data collector, I stripped it down to the bare minimum of entities needed - just the necessary linework with a minimum amount of text. There is far less processing power on the data collector than on a typical laptop or desktop computer.

The DXF files work fine in TDS. You definitely want to use a stripped-down version of the dwg file with linework only (no blocks, no polylines, no text, no points, etc.). You might even consider using different DXF files to show different lines/layering. You can turn on-off the images independently and TDS will overlay different drawings just fine. If you've got a large project, break it down into smaller parts and add detail as needed for different zoom levels.

I use the linework on just about every project I do. I really helps for orientation. You can control point symbols and zoom features for displaying different points. The maps will take a bit of time to load when you first open them, but once they've been opened, they work quite quickly. You can tell when you're overloading the map data. Go easy on it and use the linework you need for orientation and it will work well.

I haven't tried background images in tiff or jpeg. Looks like it shouldn't be too tough to set up as long as the TFR and JPW files are set up in metric. You should be able to pick the local coordinates from your background image using the image frame in your acad drawing and convert the values to metric. Upload, link and go. I would be concerned about the image size, though.

JBS

I've been able to load DXF files several times in the past, and I do find them quite helpful for orienting. I agree with the suggestion that they should be stripped down, as that's more or less the only way it works. For some reason, block sometimes go through and other times not. I think if a block consists solely of line segments, it will go through (as an alignment), but if the block contains other objects, like text, hatch, etc., it won't go through. And, same goes for points. Sometimes I can get the points to go through with the DXF file, other times (mostly) not.

My question had primarily to do with raster images used as base maps, and whether the references to the raster images within the DXF file would resolve on import to the TDS job file. I tried it this afternoon, but it was not successful.