With a heavy heart and a good try with Carlson 3.## on Tesla and with some issue we could not live with (Technical canned answers fix nothing and dont forget what got you here). , we decided to try out Magnet on the Tesla.
I thought I would never say this , because of our experience with Topsurv , but I think Topcon finally got it right . Magnet runs all of our Topcon equipment as required and the guys are loving it after a couple weeks . Its not the buggy Topsurv I remember but an upgraded almost bug free version . I forgot how great it runs the Topcon GPS . Cad screen functions are better and the new quick quick keys are a real productivity gain . All in all I am impressed with it . Time will tell .
All field software comes with some trade offs. Our crews seem to have gotten used to Magnet on the Tesla. The office end is another matter.
Topcon Tools has some serious problems. Do not use it to generate combined factors. Check your control coordinates every time you touch anything. Get ready to see 3 second topo shots blow out redundant static observations. The list goes on.
I will try to get one of the field guys to weigh in with tips for a new user. In the meantime contact me if you have office questions... TTYL, Tom
The only thing I use Topcon tools for is static processing and my own opus solutions by using the get from internet based on a radius . ( beware the coords that come in on the CORS stations are wrong more time that right so look up the current positions). I have checked these solutions to OPUS everytime and they match .
All other data is sent through Carlson Office and Survnet. With good results .
I upgraded from Topsurv to magnet so we could run the new ps101 robot and love it. It works great with our Carlson Embedded Cad also.
If all of our data is clean and the default processing parameters good for the project I can get good results with conventional data. The minute we need to change point precision or angle tolerance look out. You never know what it accepts and uses until the adjustment pukes. Some projects the program never uses the updated parameters. Add that to the fact that the view filter no longer works and it's pretty much useless as a combined data processing tool..
