Field Genius

The place I worked for last in OK used Field Genius with Topcons and with Leica GS15s and TS15s. It worked well with the Topcons, not so well with the Liecas. Which seemed a paradox, to me. The issue was matching up firmware versions on the instruments with incremental releases of the software.

Thanks. We run Topcon Hyper V's for rovers. We have a Leica 1200 and Topcon Legacy that we use for static or base units. Conventional we have SRX3 and SRX5 robots. We have an older Topcon total station that probably hasn't been out of the box in a year or two.
Our current field software is Topcon Magnet. It doesn't cut it. I would like to put together a package of something that runs on our current hardware and processes in StarNet. I would have to assume Field Genius data doesn't require the hoops that others do to get there...
Thanks again, Tom

I run FG but not your gear.
Same company own Leica and Microsurvey and they have put a lot of effort into Leica comparability judging on their media releases.
I'd get a demo and run it.

I haven't had the pleasure with Magnet, but it sure sounds like Topcon really blew it.

> I run FG but not your gear.
> Same company own Leica and Microsurvey and they have put a lot of effort into Leica comparability judging on their media releases.
> I'd get a demo and run it.
Leica GS15 + Field Genius = no covariance data with your RTK vectors. Not a happy thing for StarNet users.

I've been using FG for almost 4 years. I like it for the small topos I do for our head of maintenance, who is also an architect. He uses Autocad and for most of the work I do, I don't even prepare a drawing for him, I just dump a dxf from FG and send him the point file. I think its awesome to see the contours developing in real-time as you take shots! I use it with a Sokkia SRX and also with a CHC network rover. The robot is used for smaller topos and the CHC is used for larger, open areas. Below is a picture of one of the small topos I did - I think the contour lines are 0.5'. It was done with the SRX from two different setups. The linework coding is really a non-issue. Before your next shot, say edge of pavement, you hit the LINE icon. Take a shot and code it e/pavt (or whatever you use) and then just pick up the edge of pavement. When you're done with that feature, just hit the LINE icon to turn it off. Later you can easily add additional points to the same line, in either direction. If you want, I can send you the dxf file from this job so you can see what FG creates. I've not done any exporting to StarNet from FG so I can't comment on that feature. MicroSurvey support is responsive to requests for help - no problem there. Overall if pretty darn nice. One exception is field calc's. I came from SMI which is probably the quickest, simplest field computing software ever made. The problem with any 'newer' field COGO software is a platform issue - pretty much all windows based and the clunkyness of the GUI - pick this, pull down that, poke here, touch there etc. - really puts a kink on speedy calc's.

I'm running FG2012 on a Mesa Juniper with a Topcon Hiper V base/rover set-up. The version of FG I'm running is last years (v6.0.5.11). When they released the version right after this, something went wanky in the communication between the Juniper and the Hiper V's. I've tried working with Microsurvey on it, but have been too busy to pursue it further. It looks like the newest release has a lot of improvements, but until I can get it to work with my Hiper V's, I'm sticking with the version I have.

There are some work arounds that need to be done to get them working with the Hiper V's, but I generally like the program. Also runs well with my Topcon GPT-9003A robot (but not flawlessly)!

I'll PM you my contact info and we can talk on the phone. Looks like I'm just up the freeway from you, in Fruitland.

Cheers,

I used it for six months once, and I was very unimpressed.

I don't know if I was too big a dumbass to find the functions, but I remember I was trying to carry elevations with a total station. The freaking thing would only allow me to do that by setting up on traverse points, instead of just allowing me to set two arbitrary points forward and back, and just carrying the change in elevation.

That's the only one I remember right now, but it seemed like it was streamlined to be really easy to use and idiot proof. If you tried to do anything creative or that you were doing something that you only needed to do 1 out of a hundred times, it got really difficult really quick.