One of my field crews has been having a terrible time with rod heights lately.
Both of the guys are experienced. The chief has been in the field for 14 years, and is a very conscientious guy. They traditionally haven't had rod bust issues, and are racking their brains as to why now.
Their current theory is that perhaps their data collector doesn't hold their rod height changes? They are the only crew to still use the Topsurv software on a daily basis, after we had issues (prism constants not holding in the traverse screen, etc.). Not sure why this would start happening after using it for 3 years or so.
We have changed how we get the data into C3D lately, so I'll be having them check the .tsj against the C3D file to make sure the elevations are the same to check the upload process.
Has anyone else seen similar issues?
Thanks,
Hmmm... Is that the only issue that they found so far? Watch out for the one when you do a resection, and then use the real time roading program. Everything will check in the field..... until you download it in cad. Be ready for that one... Recomputing the raw data with Top Link on the computer fixes it. What a pain.
I'm using the latest Topsurv 8 version. There is a bug with the rod height. If you change the rod height and take a shot, it computes the elev using the original RH. What I do is change the RH, and then click in another field such as the code field or in Real Time Roading's case, click one of the customizable fields at the bottom of the screen. Then I click on the red X at the top right of the screen, take a shot and it seems to work....so far.
I'm not a big fan of Topsurv 8. It sure seems to have a lot of bugs, it's slower than my 20+ year old technology HP 48 or a SDR 33, crashes too much and the dealer acts like I don't know what I'm doing....until I show them first hand. Then they just shrug... It's not like I'm new to this. I've used TDS 48 and Ranger, Trimble TSC3, SDR 33, Allegro with Carlson etc. Of all of those, this one is the slowest by wide margin-and not to mention all the bugs.
Hope this helps.
Thanks. I'll have them look into that. Sounds like that is probably our issue.
I hear you - we've found lots of other bugs too. This one seemed a little out there though. Guess not.
Most of the other crews have found excuses/ways of getting around using our Topsurv DC, based on the issues we've had with it (we thought we knew all the big ones). These guys are still stuck with it for awhile.
Thanks again!
Have him change the RH, take a shot, and then view the raw data for that shot under the Edit Job menu. My guess is that it will still have stored the old RH instead of the new keyed in one. You can change the RH by highlighting that shot data in the raw data and click on "Edit". Change the RH by putting the correct value in the "TH" field. Click on the green checkmark at the upper right side of the screen. When you exit out of the raw data, it's going to tell you that the raw data has change and do you want to perform recomputations. Click on yes and then wait.....and wait.....wait...(lol but true) until it finishes. Then check the coordinates for that particular shot to see if it has the correct value for the elev. That should work too, but I just got into the habit of clicking in another field so I can't quite remember for certain.
What version of TopSURV are you using? I seem to recall an issue with one build that didn't write rod height changes to the raw data.
You're right! We spoke with someone at Topcon who revealed to us that this is a known issue and that we needed to upgrade to 8.2.3, which is their latest (and probably last) version of Topsurv. What a mess! Can't wait to upgrade out of Topcon fast enough.
That's the same version I'm running. The latest and greatest.
