C3D 2010 guys: Sta/OS inquiry...

I dump it into Carlson Survey or Microsurvey and do it there; I know this isn't very helpful.

The Inquiry Tool (Ribbon Analyze tab) has some commands for identifying the Station and Offset of selected points.

You should also see station and offset for nearby alignments in the cursor tooltip when you hover the cursor somewhere in the drawing window. This tooltip can get clobbered by other tooltips, however, so you might need to move the cursor slightly to one side, so that there are no drawing objects directly beneath the cursor.

Thanks y'all.

Amazing that in the 80's DCA knew we needed that function and supplied it. And the HP-41 survey pac had it.

But architects know best what we need, I guess. :pissed:

The inquiry tool is OK if you are looking for only a few points. Another option that might be useful for you is the Station & Offset report available in the Toolbox. It will dump out a list for every point in the project, or you can select points.

Thanks Steve,

Do you have to have an "offical alignment" set up to do those?

> Amazing that in the 80's DCA knew we needed that function and supplied it. And the HP-41 survey pac had it.

I guess I don't really understand what you're looking for... What is it the HP-41 survey pac had that C3D doesn't...?

Thanks Sinc,

I want a simple function to read sta/os off a line (any line) to a pt, without having to setup an "alignment".

Say I were analyizing a bdy line, with many irons on that line. I draw a line between the two pts at each end of the line.

I want to pick the line near the end where I want 0+00 to be, tell it that that end is 0+00, and then pick the pts along the line and have it tell me what the sta/os's are, and have that info reflected on the command line.

I have the old DCA lisp routine, and it works just like that, no fuss.

I would use that routine, but we are not allowed to use autolisp anymore! 🙁

So I was hoping this expensive package (C3D 2010) would perform that simple always-needed function.

Thanks,

Steve

I guess I don't really understand WHY you're doing that... What's your end goal? Why do you view station/offset along a boundary to be an "always-needed function"?

Why do a Sta/OS inquiry...

> I guess I don't really understand WHY you're doing that ... Why do you view station/offset along a boundary to be an "always-needed function"?

Isn't it a good idea to be able to quickly check the actual alignment of a set of measured points -- to see if or how far off a particular line they are? Useful in engineering surveying as well as legal?

It's easy to do in Copan, where its an option under Multiple Inverses Calculation

Why do a Sta/OS inquiry...

> Isn't it a good idea to be able to quickly check the actual alignment of a set of measured points -- to see if or how far off a particular line they are? Useful in engineering surveying as well as legal?

I can understand wanting to do that. But a station/offset report...? Around a boundary?

The two main problems I see with that are 1) there are "dead zones" on the outside of each property corner, where there is no valid station/offset and 2) knowing the "station" of a point doesn't really tell you how far it is from a corner; you'd also need to know the "station" of the nearest corner.

The main reason I'm asking is because, if I understand what people are looking for, I might be able to help. For example, there's already the LotFit command, which lets you select linework and Cogo Points, then automatically calculates the distance/bearing to each Cogo Point from the nearest linework corner.

The next obvious improvement to this routine is to have it automatically do a least-squares best fit, moving either the linework to a best-fit on the Cogo Points, or the Cogo Points to a best-fit on the linework. But I can also make it do other things, if there's something else that would be particularly useful. I'm open to feedback. For example, it sounds as if it might be useful to also have it report the perpendicular distance to the nearest piece of linework for each Cogo Point.

Why do a Sta/OS inquiry...

Hi Sinc,

The need is not as complex as that. Don't need a report on every line or all pts...

Just a quick, line at a time thing where you read the answer in the command line.

For example, if you want to know the brg and dist of a line, you don't neccesarily want a report, you just want to know the brg and dist of that line, right now.

Same with sta/os, to see how a pt relates to a line.

Maybe a clearer example would be: wanting to know how far a bldg corner is off of the property line.

It's easy to do in lisp, but am looking for an out-of-the-box C3D method.

Thanks,

Steve

Why do a Sta/OS inquiry...

Just realized that the DIST command doesn't give bearings... That's something I always forget, since I generally use tools like PTINV or the EntityTracker from the Sincpac-C3D.

With OOTB C3D, you can use the Inquiry Tool's Point Inverse to get a distance and bearing between two points. Not as nice as the PTINV command, but workable.

If you already have a line drawn in the drawing, then with OOTB C3D, you can use the CGLIST command then select the line to see its bearing and distance.

Why do a Sta/OS inquiry...

Maybe I am missing something here, but can't you just use the distance command with osnap set to node and perp?
Units set to Surveyor's will give you bearings.

Eagle Point has the Surveyor's Companion that has a Stakeout - Report for Station/Offset that you can either Print or Place on a clipboard. Many other options as well just for Surveyors and to make Civil 3D a little easier.

Why do a Sta/OS inquiry...

You don't have any issues using Surveyor's units?

I haven't even tried using them in years. They used to be very funky, and never seemed to work right, so I haven't tried using them in a long time.

Why do a Sta/OS inquiry...

> Maybe I am missing something here, but can't you just use the distance command with osnap set to node and perp?
> Units set to Surveyor's will give you bearings.

Yes Edward, that's prolly what I will have to do.

Thanks,

Steve