I do a lot of staking houses and of course all of the house plans are in architectural dimensions which I convert to decimal when generating my coordinate file. No problem I can convert 1-11 inches in my head but when I have fractional inches I have to use a calculator. Is there a way of entering architectural dimensions in Carlson Survey cogo to generate points? I've tried changing the units to architectural in settings but when I try traversing with 20'-61/2" (example), it doesn't work. Thanks
Yes me too. Lots of fractional inches and no way to use them directly. So I assigned a calculator to one of the keys on my data collector. When I am traversing architectural plans I punch the button and the calculator pops up, I key in the fractional inches then divide by 12 then add the feet for a total distance. Remember the number, go back to the traverse and key in the distance. It goes pretty fast after awhile :-).
I struggled with this for years also, usually with a calculator on the desk, often printing the plans and writing converted values on the plans, in my case the end result was always metric as well so double conversion. Somewhat surprising that Carlson and/or MicroSurvey haven't added an easy way to do this.
Several years I ago I created a LISP routine that draws a building perimeter, takes any unit, metres, decimal feet or feet and inches. The input format for feet and inches is very simple, comma-delimited feet,inches,fractions. For example 25'-10 1l2" is entered as 25,10,1/2. If your units are set to metric then a feet value is simply suffixed with the letter F/f like 25.51f, likewise if imperial units are set then 6.32m would convert to feet. Saves a ton of time, workflow is likewise simple, pick starting point, set starting direction, then enter first distance, next a negative input is left at 90 for specified length, positive input is right at 90, with other options for non-90 angles. Minimal inputs, no conversions necessary.
Polyline on completion, could easily add a closure check and segment editor to fix mistakes.
Then also a DI2 command that works exactly like the DI CAD command but spits out surveyor friendly bearing and length in metric, decimal feet as well as feet and inches. Takes point numbers as input as well instead of picking points, running inside MicroSurvey CAD.
