Anyone still use or have that program I wrote some 7 or 8 years ago to view those?
It was a stand-alone program.
I thought it was LarryP that contracted me to do it but I ran across my file with all my notes and it was Lee Green. The LIDAR thing is what I did for Larry.
I wrote it in an old Visual Basic version for which I no longer have the development environment for. I was thinking to re-write in something a little more up to date programmer's tool set - i.e. .NET 4.x and C#.
I still have the original source code but can't do much with it except to translate it in the newer language - and use newer technologies where I can.
A thought passed earlier to make it web based. You could upload your file, mess with it as you wish and when I could have the machine email it back to you.
Wendell: if your server is capable of dishing up .NET pages perhaps you might be interested to talk about.
I'm just tossing it out there to see if anyone might be interested.
Email me or reply here. Makes no difference to me. Got nothing else to do at the moment.
E.
Do I remember correctly that .raw files are basically text files that can be red with notepad?
> Do I remember correctly that .raw files are basically text files that can be red with notepad?
It's a text file, but a very cryptic one.
Yes, they are plain ole comma delimited text files.
As Norm states, they ain't very "human friendly".
I found one of my old test installs when I was testing my setup/install package and the thing still runs -- even on this Win8.1 machine!!
At least I can more easily re-build the screens.
I have and still use VB6.
Could I make an .exe?
Sure you could if you had all my project files and source code.
I have all service pack CDs for that version of DevStudio except for the initial install CD.
I could always just open up the .frm and .frx files and pull the old code out by hand.
It needs to be re-written anyhow. It's a huge memory hog. That's only because I got fancy with how the output was rendered. It read all the raw file contents and built up an enormous XML payload in memory, then sent that for rendering using an XSLT displayed in a browser control. The idea being the end-user, if knowledgeable in XSLT, could mess with the display or create their own from scratch if they wanted to.
.raw/.rw5 file viewer ... another programming question
Hi,
Not to hijack but here's a kind of related question.
Anyone familiar with some graphics programming?
I'm currently considdering writing something to collect manhole data, it would be Nice if i could open a dxf file to zoom and pan around and select points in the graphic screen. I don't see where tot start thuis!
The tool should run on my tsc2 running winmobile5. I'm using Lazarus & the free pascal compiler (Delphi 7 clone)
Apreciate any insight on this,
Christof
First off, thank you for the spelling police for not beating me up about the spelling error I committed (actually, not so much a "spelling" as "wrong word" error)....:-P
It was a number of years ago I thought I remembered opening raw files with notepad. I do remember having to be careful while editing.
.raw/.rw5 file viewer ... another programming question
> Anyone familiar with some graphics programming?
> I'm currently considdering writing something to collect manhole data, it would be Nice if i could open a dxf file to zoom and pan around and select points in the graphic screen. I don't see where tot start thuis!
> The tool should run on my tsc2 running winmobile5. I'm using Lazarus & the free pascal compiler (Delphi 7 clone)
Hi Christof,
I have lots of graphics programming background but that was about 15 years ago when I was one of the developers for the ImageMan product while at data-tech.com
Everything was in C++. I did write the Delphi sample application for the FaxMan product however. I haven't touched anything in Pascal since then and that was almost 20 years ago. I was the only that did anything with Delphi and that was only with the fax product - nothing imaging related. As far as panning and zooming goes you will need to get a reference to the displayed image's DIB (Device Independent Bitmap) and I don't know if you will be able to do that with a DXF being that it is a vector image and not a raster image. Raster images are much easier to deal with.
It has been a long time but I might be able to help coach you through the algorithms but might not be much use in Delphi. It has been too long since then. As far as writing for a winmobile device, I do have a little experience with that.
I didn't know Delphi (clone or otherwise) was still around to be honest. However, I do recall it was more popular in Europe and never really took off here in the States like in Europe. Do you know if there is an imaging component or control in your programming toolkit? Start with that.
Good luck. I don't think it will be easy.
E.
> It was a number of years ago I thought I remembered opening raw files with notepad. I do remember having to be careful while editing.
Yes you can edit them with Notepad. You could even import them into Excel as a comma delimited text file and save them back as the same. Many of fields' values are coded such as 0 = north and 1 = south or cut = 0 and fill = 1. I doubt I need to mention if you screwed up one of those inadvertently and sent that back into your processing software. My thing made it "human friendly" and would show you "North" or "South" instead of 0 or 1 respectfully, etc.
The first two records in every file are the job (JO) and mode setup (MO) records respectfully. The JO record has just the job name and date and time. The MO record has very specific info that pertains to all data following it - such as scale factor, angle units, distance units, et.al. Mess one of those up and you could potentially render the remaining data unusable or seriously out of whack - "cattywampus" if you will. 🙂
Do a search for "tds raw record spec" to find the specs for the .raw file format. Version 4.0, dated 2004, is what I coded for. Carlson has a few extensions to this spec for which I also coded for.
I'm still interested in doing this (again).
Do it better of course. 🙂
All inputs are welcomed!!
Got nothing else better to do. Might as well do something useful.
E
Thank you for the explanation. Even when I was editing such files, I was unaware of what I could have (but don't think I did) wrong.
> Thank you for the explanation. Even when I was editing such files, I was unaware of what I could have (but don't think I did) wrong.
No problem John. Like most you're probably just adjusting HR/HI values or notes and such and those are pretty obvious. God help you to mess up a delimiter or one of the coded fields.
Like messing with the registry I suppose. It's OK if you know what you are doing but God help you if you mess one up. :-O
I'm pretty sure that is exactly what I was doing actually. Thankfully I knew not to mess with the other values.
And I've been lucky with editing the registry, have not messed that up to date either....
I wrote many field data reading software routines for Copan, the free COGO program.
Copan can read
- Geodimeter file — .job or .raw
- TDS RAW/RW5 file — .raw or .rw5
- Nikon RAW file — .raw
- Leica GSI-8 file — .gsi
- Leica GSI-16 file — .gsi
- Wild GRE file — .gre
and process them. http://underhill.ca/software/manuals/windows/user_manual/Field%20Files.html
Even if you don't want any processing done, it will output the data in a user-friendly form.
Job: K05-158 Date: 07-26-2005 Time: 11:09:39
;; SF= 1.0 PC= 0.0"
// pnt= 1 N= 5000.0 E= 5000.0 Z= 100.0 cod= Start
// pnt= 2 N= 5577884.876 E= 681675.723 Z= 838.194 cod= CP
// pnt= 1 N= 5578066.198 E= 681604.833 Z= 845.574 cod= CP
// pnt= N= 5578066.198 E= 681604.833 Z= 845.574 cod= CP
At: 1 Ref Pnt: 2 HC: 0°00'00" HI: 1.892
=To= =HC= =VC= =SD= =HS= =Code= =Note=
100 0°00'00" 92°12'45" 194.854 1.757 cp
5 0°00'10" 92°38'35" 146.144 CP842
// pnt= 7 N= 5578035.739098 E= 681616.74042 Z= 842.500182 cod= CP840
=To= =HC= =VC= =SD= =HS= =Code= =Note=
7 0°00'05" 96°06'05" 32.890 CP840
// pnt= N= 5578035.739098 E= 681616.74042 Z= 842.500182 cod= CP840
At: 7 Ref Pnt: 2 HC: 0°00'00" HI: 1.555
// pnt= 101 N= 5578025.353318 E= 681541.677606 Z= 837.21428 cod= gnd
=To= =HC= =VC= =SD= =HS= =Code= =Note=
101 103°28'35" 94°03'15" 75.968 1.470 gnd
PS: I'm surprised to read that RAW or RW5 are considered cryptic/unfriendly; i found them the easiest of the lot to understand (the worst being GRE/GSI)!
Sounds like fun.
I couldn't begin to count how many different file/data parsers I've written over the years - probably in the hundreds, maybe more. That would include the 4 special purpose programming languages I invented and wrote the compilers for.
This version I'm re-writing allows for user friendly editing as well as viewing.
Take for example the RAW MO (Mode setup) record. My screen that edits that only has 2 text input fields for scale factor and edm offset. All the rest are either checkboxes or radio buttons.
Since I started from scratch just this morning, I only have the MO record being editable for now. The main grid is already showing all the friendly info. I'm sure I'll find all kinds of neat things to do with this one that other didn't. The other just did a nice fancy display.
But hey. Like I said. Got nuthin else better to do right now. Might as well keep sharp on the programming acumen. I'm sure you understand Martin.
E.
That's why we always made an archive (.ar5) file before doing ANYTHING with the raw data. Having issues right now cuz my field guy went in to change a rod height and now everything is 1 mile below sea level!! arrgh!
-JD-
Hi,
You can also view an RW5 file online by going to the following site:
http://www.carlsonemea.com/cwa/
Then you simply upload your RW5 file and it will generate a nice overview.
You can also download your dataset in these formats:
- CSV format (for Excel)
- KML format (for Google Earth.
greetings,
Floris.
I use Notepad to view the raw files when I don't use the application within my survey programs.
Hi Floris,
Thanks for the link.
Interesting. I see that it's a beta version and that's fine.
However, it only shows me job and mode setup information - nothing else.
Starting from scratch, I could have done that much in a just a couple of hours.
I had a look at the KML file it generates and I don't see anything useful there at all.
I had the idea of doing my new version as a web-based app like they are trying to do. Perhaps I should contact them and see if they would be interested in hiring me for such a task.
E.
Hi BigE,
I just send you a PM.. so please send me your RW5 file for evaluation.
If you selected the proper requested report format (TS report or GPS report) then all the data should be visible.
A next generation is in the works.. but currently there are already a lot of users in our region using this online tool.
Greetings,
Floris.
