Time To Try A Better Software

I'm Wendell, owner/admin of SurveyorConnect.com, and I approve this message. ?????ÿ

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I haven't had time to fully review the material, but it seems like the approach is akin to that of the old C&G, where you calculated points and then drew lines and curves between them - and if you wanted to move the line you had to recalc the points - as opposed to the CAD approach where you draw the lines and curves and then populate the geometry with points.?ÿ?ÿ

Maybe I donƒ??t really have to learn civil3d after all. ?ÿAnother software I will be adding to my list of reviewing. I read in some of the documents it was UNIX based at one time. Oh I long for the UNIX days. Windows just makes me grumpy lol. Interesting reading on the site. I will have to see if I can find more out about this for sure.?ÿ

I've always wanted to use this software, but it's tough to swim against the tide of autocad.?ÿ ?ÿ I'm curious if there are any land surveyor users that can chime in, or if there is a video online that shows how a land surveyor could actually use this on a daily basis.?ÿ ?ÿ

I think I used the DOS based version of this for cogo way back in the early 90's when I started surveying.?ÿ?ÿ

Is this the same software Richard Harrison developed??ÿ If so, I used it in the early/mid 1980's on a Kaypro or Compaq and thought it was intuitive and worked well.

@hpalmer?ÿ I believe so.?ÿ ?ÿ

This review is dated, but will offer insight to anyone curious:?ÿ

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https://lidarmag.com/2004/08/31/software-review-sitecomp-survey-2/

Posted by: @sitecompsurvey

This review is dated, but will offer insight to anyone curious:?ÿ

?ÿ

https://lidarmag.com/2004/08/31/software-review-sitecomp-survey-2/

'dated' is an understatement for tech software like this.

@dave-o You are correct in many ways, but in other ways, we make software that simply works for land surveyors. Not as many bells & whistles compared to AutoCAD... but have a demo with us & you will see the value.?ÿ

@sitecompsurvey post the system requirements. Do you allow like a demo trial say 30 days or so. Also for a demo of you running the software would it be like a webinar type setting? I am trying to figure out how to see it in action etc. ?ÿ?ÿ

With all the bells and whistles of autocad and micro station it makes it challenging to turn off what you or users do not need. ?ÿLots to be said for points oriented geometry

@olemanriver Sending you a message.?ÿ

@sitecompsurvey Roger that.?ÿ

Posted by: @olemanriver

Maybe I donƒ??t really have to learn civil3d after all. ?ÿAnother software I will be adding to my list of reviewing. I read in some of the documents it was UNIX based at one time. Oh I long for the UNIX days. Windows just makes me grumpy lol. Interesting reading on the site. I will have to see if I can find more out about this for sure.

I worked for a company in the Twin Cities, where SiteComp is based, and ran the Unix versions for 8 or 10 years, starting in the mid-1990s. Before that I ran some that were written in Basic. The Basic versions of the program were quite sophisticated but the computers were slow, and a screen refresh took a long time.

The Unix versions were fast and easy to use. In terms of ergonomics, one advantage they had was a good many hot keys, i.e. combinations of keyboard and mouse keys, for commonly used commands. You had to learn those, but that didn't take long since you used them every day.

Once you knew the hot keys, they were much faster than screen buttons and pull-down menus. It has annoyed me ever since to have to move a mouse around and click several times to do something like a pan or zoom. If you can save a few seconds on such an operation, it increases your productivity quite a bit in the course of a day.

It was necessary to occupy an existing point, or set a new one, before doing anything, just as you would in the field. One of the mouse keys would snap to the point nearest the cursor, or you could input the point number. As I recall there was a display bar at the bottom of the screen that listed the occupied point, coordinates, elevation and description.

Hitting the letter T started a traverse routine from the occupied point, with linework created from your bearing/angle and distance input, and new points set as you went along. Shift-T did the same but without creating lines. Points could be displayed as tick marks (point objects), or not, as desired.

Of course we'd normally start with the field points. Those were generated by a separate (TDS) program from the raw data. All the PNEZD data would come with them.

To inverse between two points, my recollection is that you'd occupy them in succession and then hit a single key. Can't remember now what it was. Another single key would draw a line between the two points on whatever layer was active.

We ran the SiteComp on Hewlett-Packard Series 900 workstations, running HP-UX 9 and upward. They're not being made any more, unfortunately.

SiteComp's transition to Windows was under way when I retired. Of course I don't know how the present-day version compares to the ones I ran.

@rplumb314 as i get through hay season into fall and winter I will have to give this a try if nothing else changes. You said inverse. Lol. I think if you onow what a inverse is then you are a true surveyor. I was helping a cad guy out and he was having trouble on some boundary. I had my note pad and said give me an inverse between this point and that point and the third one. I got the deer in the headlights look. I had to settle for angle and distance measurements from his cad lines. And grab my calculator and get the coordinates and perform them myself inverse. Needless to say the cad lines were not attached to the points i shot in the field. Problem solved. Thank you for the info for sure. I am sure cad civil3d are great and if i learn them i will do fine. I am just scared of them. Honestly. Seems every company i have either helped or worked with troubleshooting field data was mostly a civil3d mistake or cad mistake. Like international feet instead of us survey feet on a state plane system. Everything when back to the field was shifted. Or some boundary corners being set didnƒ??t match what was on the ground. Etc. i am sure i will make the same mistakes as well. When and if i start using it.

Contact us for a demo today!?ÿ

As surveyors, the only data we actually capture is points. As such, I believe the software we use should also be Points centric. If you're coding in the field, a well developed code list and a good software will practically deliver the drawing for you. I use engineer surveying software for my main survey in and to generate stake out data from design (mostly from designers cad files) but do use a cad package for giving drawing outputs a final polish.?ÿ

I’m curious; I loathe Autocad and it’s legacy problems (like being built to use only ONE of my 16 CPU cores, no more than 3 GB of my RAM and barely any of my GPU). 

I’m planning on taking a look at SiteComp, but the first thing I’m going to do is look for documentation and YouTube videos..