Yeah technology has truly changed some of the processes. If I were pinning back years ago. It would have been a total station set a couple corners or offset to the corners or a box of the house. Then move and turn 90’s pull in diagonals to square it all up. Have a few good safe offsets. Once foundation was poured next visit back set up on our offsets site the line set the cons nails or scribe for brick points. Data collector when we had them wouldn’t even be used. We would just have the house plans and comp as we went. Sometimes just set on front prop corners and set the house or box of house. So all in one we had sideline setbacks cked as we went. On most total stations or digital transits it was pretty easy to switch angles left and right. So using sin cos or tanj o/h a/h o/a some people have some saying but I learned it oscar had a harry old a$$$$. Lol. It was a professor in college that was tutoring me who was also a land surveyor. I was not good at math and he truly had a way to help me as i was way behind upon graduating HS in simple things math wise. Never had to solve a right triangle in HS . Not that they didn’t teach it at my small school. It was i was a athlete so was focused on the wrong things at that time. I got away with a bunch of missing classes I should have not done. So i spent a lot of time early on in college playing catch up. Yeah I think there is a whole bunch of young folks just eager to learn and have a better foundation than i did from HS . They just need some mentoring. A bit of history as well.
They don't order any traverse kits with our equipment, we basically ask for gear as needed. I asked for a tribrach and round prism to go with it to use as a backsight when needed. I know of one crew that doesn't have any non 360 prism though.
These days a lot of stuff is driven by liability. They want everything stored in the raw data in case of a lawsuit or something. We lay out the exact house corners as per the plan, so if they screw it up, it's their fault. I always run "check backsight" to make sure I'm good and "store as check" goes into the raw data after I've finished my layout. In the past, when I was an instrument man running conventional, I would be checking zero on a pilon with an arrow on it, so it was getting checked regularly, but not stored in the data. I like knowing I have proof now, instead of just my word.
We don't do anything for brick, once the foundation is up, the framers and other trades are on their own for the most part.
Yeah many things have changed for sure some are not driven by just liability but i am in agreement with you on that for sure. Sometimes its a matter of process for not only in field but also easier for office techs to qa/qc. And there understanding. Like on the job I went to this past week the office manager for that project made it a point that I not perform a resection. He doesn’t trust them lol. I say he doesn’t understand them and his lack of time in the field and whoever trained him said not to so it just goes on for years. Heck my last LS didn’t like them said you could end up on wrong side of a set of points backwards and never know it. Old school thinking that probably goes back to when we computed a resection long hand in a field book. Yes i messed some up over the early years. But It is a very valuable tool if used correctly now days and would have saved me a ton of time this week. We had two points that i had to set two different flies period to set them. Just no other way around it to follow the office process. I could have resected or set some offsets and taped them in but not allowed. I do understand it when you have not had the opportunity to train crews on how to do that and office folks that could understand offsets and taping . If its not a coordinate its not real to them sometimes.
I started off using resections just to find my control. Then I made a point to see how well they checked. I proved to myself that resections work as well as the points you're using. I go out of my way to do extra checks when I use them, because I don't want them to be outright banned and I know that our boss gets worried by them only because a couple of people in the past have done some very sketchy resections, that should have only been used. I haven't had anyone complain about any of them that I have done, but I make sure I'm well within the resection using points off in 3 different directions at least, and a check well beyond where I'm working.
Member
November 30, 2023 at 2:33 pm
I see the same problem as Mike, but with an S6 and MT1000 in Std mode.
I’m wondering if it is something to do with the controller connection to the instrument.
I am using radio.
What sort of connection do you have?
It may not be an issue for cable or bluetooth
This throws me off even more, since I was assuming it may not be an issue with the S6 and older S5's. Are you still working for Trimble? Just wondering if you can get some answers from inside as to why such a difference between some peoples experience.
I used a passive 360 prism with my S6 for the first 2 years and I can honestly say I never had any issues with it locking on to anything but the prism. All types of environments.
I am with you on that. That first 360 they came out with for S6. Then they had that little box grey with ability to search active to make sure it was locked onto you vs something else. Now days with the new safety vest having all that reflective tape on them I would worry more about it locking to that in passive mode.
Our battery went dead at end of the day for the last couple points for the day on the my1000. As we were shooting across traffic and through some trees my crew chief was getting close to a point when all of a sudden it said out like 100 ft. He said thats not right. I said it’s looking our way so i walked through the woods and it had locked in passive mode to a reflective tape on a electric box that was literally right in line with site. I covered it with my hand it immediately locked on prism he raised it a half foot or so and all was good. Just have to pay attention for sure . I get more upset about the radio range and it loosing radio as busses and big rigs get between the gun and yourself at longer distances. We have a old S5 so probably need to update the firmware in s5. But they don’t want to put any money into it as they are looking to upgrade after the new year a lot of older equipment.
Wow, I would say there have definitely been some changes since then in that case. It's even a meme I've seen, with a trimble locked onto a random taillight. I've had to turn off autolock just to get the darn thing off my coworkers dirty old work vest and back onto the prism.
Forgot to comment on the last video and pic I posted, I switched it to bluetooth mode. In bluetooth made it displays HA/VA and target height and constant, unfortunately no change in the 7 second measurement. That is best case scenario, with a stable prism.
I should have done this to begin with, since I've been through this before and I can already see the comments, that I have too many points in my job. Well I just started a new project and job with 1 point in it, and recorded my measurement to it for backsight and it still takes the same amount of time. A smaller job affects lag in the UI, but doesn't seem to affect the speed of measurements at all.
https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1QipNb7b8enM-IWzApZyPVa2RmGxVGC0bmZrp9uR80
Have you used station set up plus much on those tighter tolerances jobs.
I actually haven't yet, though I did use the equivalent in Fieldgenius at least once. Basically like a resection but also set up on a point. I'd never heard of it and wasn't really sure if it was considered acceptable, but it worked well and I later found out one of our more savvy experienced party chiefs has used it so I will keep that option in mind.
Sometimes when we're shooting manually with the peanut prism, I will let the robot follow my coworkers vest all the way to the next point and then I will have to snap it onto the actual prism once he pulls it back out.
We had our Xmas party last night, we were recently merged with a very large company so there were several hundred people present. I was seated next to a guy who was on a crew who did mostly commercial layout. I asked if they were using the mt1000 for much and they said they didn't use it for gridline layout because they didn't consider it quite accurate enough, so they use peanut prisms, but when I mentioned using semi active he said "yeah that takes FOREVER to get the shot". This was with an s7 and tsc7. No other details. So unless Trimble decided that they can give subpar equipment to Canada, or a section of one province in Canada, I don't think this behaviour is limited to our equipment. I have no idea why Trimble engineers would tell something different to someone.
