Star*net question: horizontal errors caused by vertical mistakes?

I process all of my total station data by reducing the distance and vertical angles to mark-to-mark values (using the observed zenith angles and the HI/HT), in which case any HI blunders would definitely affect the results. So my Star*Net records do not have HI and HT appended to them, those values are already applied. 

What you can do is use the slope distance and vertical angle to reduce the distance to horizontal and do a 2D adjustment. If you have blunders and errors in the HI/HT, I would forget about a 3d adjustment. LSQ are not really meant to deal with blunders (other than to detect them)

Presuming that we are talking about 3D adjustments, yes. In fact, measure up errors are probably the most common of errors, closely followed by point misnumbering.   

Posted by: @john-hamilton

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I process all of my total station data by reducing the distance and vertical angles to mark-to-mark values (using the observed zenith angles and the HI/HT), in which case any HI blunders would definitely affect the results. So my Star*Net records do not have HI and HT appended to them, those values are already applied. 

What you can do is use the slope distance and vertical angle to reduce the distance to horizontal and do a 2D adjustment. If you have blunders and errors in the HI/HT, I would forget about a 3d adjustment. LSQ are not really meant to deal with blunders (other than to detect them)

Ugh. This may be too much work. Most all of my data types are either M or DV. I see that M can be 2D or 3D; I could just edit out the HI/HT at the end of each line.

But as far as I can tell, DV is 3D only; I've got them for all my backsights and foresights. What might I do with those? For example:

DV 3300-2800 212.4630 89-01-24.00 5.200/4.820
M 3300-2800-3500 225-47-41.50 86.3715 96-55-44.50 5.200/5.250
M 3300-2800-3500 225-47-42.00 86.3730 96-55-42.50 5.200/5.250
M 3300-2800-3500 225-47-44.50 86.3735 96-55-44.50 5.200/5.250

It's been a good long while since I've run a 2D adjustment, but I *think* you can specify that the project is a 2D job in the project options, and then add the .3DREDUCE inline option at the top of each .dat file.  That will instruct the program to reduce the slope distances to horizontal but ignore any height data.

Posted by: @rfc

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Ugh. This may be too much work

HINT: Look into the .3r inline command

Does Star*net allow an azimuth in a DV record? Isn't the purpose of the DV record type to allow inclusion of azimuth free records?

@mathteacher No, azimuth is not an option in a DV. You can put azimuth in a B record by itself or a BM record with distance, vertical angle, etc

@mathteacher 

a DV record contains no horizontal angle’ish data at all. So no azimuths there.  Other record types that do handle horizontal angle data will accept azimuths.