I never got to use those older versions of access with a robot. Just GNSS and one time with a conventional Nikon (ran very slowly with access for whatever reason). I assume it was much more stable and bug free than the current stuff but I would still hate the map screen since I count on it to navigate through the 5000+ point subdivisions for points I can use.?ÿ
the 5000+ point subdivisions for points I can use
Forget points for at least 90% of staking. Doesn't matter what the field software is, anything over 50-100 shown at a time is just going to be a mess, even with the bigger screens and touchscreen navigation.
Either split them up enough into separate files to be useful (by block, street, water vs. sewer, etc.) or just get rid of them altogether. I only use points for a few items these days. Light poles, hydrants, storm & sanitary structures, maybe a couple others. And they are all separate CSVs, as they should be because they are on separate layers in C3D and get exported as such.
Clearing limits, building exterior lines, grid lines? DXFs. All separated out of course.
Curb & gutter, road CL? Alignments with H&V profiles. Or a corridor if we're doing more advanced stuff like slope staking.
Water lines with C/F to FG? Load up a 2D DXF of the water lines plus a TTM of the FG surface.
Setting lot & block corners or CL monuments? I just load up the subdivision linework, along with the text for lots and blocks, which will show up right there in the controller for the crew to see so they can write the correct lot on the lath.
When we made the switch to yellow, several of our offices still insisted on spending hours picking points in CAD, then even more hours moving items around to make staking sheets that show each and every point. I told them they might as well trade in all their gear and go back to non-robotic TS without DCs and booking observations. They're slowly catching on, wasting more and more time and money along the way, and hamstringing the field guys to boot.
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I'm installing 2022 today, after getting sidetracked by ALTAs and wind farm projects. Looking forward to playing around with it.
I stand corrected. It's still switching back to passive after check backsight in some jobs.?ÿ
@rover83?ÿ
Unfortunately I'm 100% field and my schedule doesn't allow any time for organizing my own uploads and sorting through them for 20-30 different subdivisions.?ÿ
What data collectors do you use that you have issues with more than 100 points shown at a time?
Fieldgenius handled it with basically zero lag, 3000+ points and a DXF. The map screen would crash after zooming in/out too many times but it happened almost as frequently with smaller jobs, didn't seem like increasing the number of points had a major effect on it. Trimble on the tsc7 lags a little bit in the bigger subdivisions but nothing like the old tsc3 dinosaurs. They can't handle a DXF with more than like 50 points in the job.?ÿ
Our office also uses microsurvey for cad and doesn't have a lot of experience with tbc yet.?ÿ
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Unfortunately I'm 100% field and my schedule doesn't allow any time for organizing my own uploads and sorting through them for 20-30 different subdivisions.?ÿ
?ÿThat's something that should be handled by the office. If they have the time to manually drop thousands of points for one subdivision, that time could be used to generate one-tenth of those points plus a handful of DXFs, RXLs, TTMs, etc. for three subdivisions. Unless they just want to stay inefficient in order to bill more hours, it's a no-brainer to optimize workflows for both office and field.
What data collectors do you use that you have issues with more than 100 points shown at a time?
Fieldgenius handled it with basically zero lag, 3000+ points and a DXF. The map screen would crash after zooming in/out too many times but it happened almost as frequently with smaller jobs, didn't seem like increasing the number of points had a major effect on it. Trimble on the tsc7 lags a little bit in the bigger subdivisions but nothing like the old tsc3 dinosaurs. They can't handle a DXF with more than like 50 points in the job.?ÿ
?ÿI wasn't referring to crashing software - newer DCs can certainly handle it - but the fact that displaying tons of points makes for a messy screen and can be difficult to parse when targeting a particular stakeout routine. Making use of different CSVs and DXFs, plus the different layers in the DXF, helps get the operator a clean screen that is easier to work with.
Our office also uses microsurvey for cad and doesn't have a lot of experience with tbc yet.?ÿ
?ÿThat shouldn't be a problem. DXFs have been around forever, same with LandXML for surfaces and alignments, and Microsurvey can handle both. DXFs can go straight to Access, and surfaces and alignments can either go straight to Access or get dropped into TBC and immediately exported as RXLs or TTMs. Takes about 5-10 minutes to get the hang of it in TBC.
It blows my mind how many firms/offices (including my employer in this) refuse to optimize workflow for the gear and software being used. It's the equivalent of a retail location not taking checks or credit/debit, and insisting on cash. Sure, it's technically going to "work" but it's going to cause a lot of unnecessary annoyance and lose them lots of money.
It blows my mind how many firms/offices (including my employer in this) refuse to optimize workflow for the gear and software being used. It's the equivalent of a retail location not taking checks or credit/debit, and insisting on cash. Sure, it's technically going to "work" but it's going to cause a lot of unnecessary annoyance and lose them lots of money.
That's what happens when you have non-technical people in charge of technical work.?ÿ Around my place of employment non-surveyors have no say in what we do on the technical side, as it should be.
@rover83?ÿ
As far as I know they are not manually dropping all these points for my upload, the points from all new downloads from the field get added to the drawing and they just export a CSV of everything in there. The issue is that they don't have enough time to manually go through and pick and choose what I'll need (usually leaving me without important points). My experience has been that just having everything is the better way or I end up screwing around trying to find a previous point that didn't end up in the upload, pulling coordinates from a previous job.
As far as I know they are not manually dropping all these points for my upload, the points from all new downloads from the field get added to the drawing and they just export a CSV of everything in there. The issue is that they don't have enough time to manually go through and pick and choose what I'll need (usually leaving me without important points).
I guess I was referring more to the original stakeout points - how do they create those other than manually? I don't know of any civil plansets that come with COGO points on all the linework and features. Someone has to be creating those points in the office.
As far as dumping points after staking, for us 99% of the time they never go into a CAD drawing, especially not the original staking DWG where the calc points, alignments, linework and xref'd plan drawings reside. JXLs are dropped into TBC where we can run standard and custom stakeout reports. The staking DWG is kept as clean and small as possible. If any part of it gets updated or redesigned, that portion is re-exported and sent to the cloud project so that the next morning the crew can import and override the old file, and be confident they are staking the latest information.
We have gotten burned when crews import old stake data after a design change, or when they import or key in unadjusted control that was just hanging out in a previous job.
There's no reason for us to place as-staked points into a DWG unless someone is contesting our staking and saying we screwed up. In that case we convert the as-staked points in TBC, export out to a separate DWG and send over an exhibit showing where our staked points actually fall - hopefully within tolerance and in the correct place.
Only on rare occasion will I import or link points from another staking job, and that's usually if there's some sort of problem, or I did a really screwy COGO routine before and don't want to bother with it again. But even then all I am pulling in is one or two, maybe a handful of points at most. We usually run daily files for staking to both keep the clutter to a minimum and more easily track exactly what we did on what date.
My experience has been that just having everything is the better way or I end up screwing around trying to find a previous point that didn't end up in the upload, pulling coordinates from a previous job.
For sure. All of our calc data stays on the cloud and gets updated as needed; crews will just refresh and update each morning, and then only link the entities (points, DXFs, alignments, surfaces) that they need for staking. They have everything, but are able to turn things on and off as they need to.
@rover83?ÿ
As far as I know they do have a separate original drawing vs the one where everything is added to, but I honestly don't know their entire workflow. I'm going to refer back to this post in the future, if we ever get caught up enough that we can work on workflow routines to improve. It certainly would be less responsibility on me if everything was organized into smaller areas of the subdivision...but with the amount of equipment and vehicles in my way sometimes I would still end up wanting to backsight a point 300 meters away on the other side of the subdivision, and not have the point because the office assumed I wouldn't need it.?ÿ
@rover83 I'm?ÿ following this thread out curiosity for the Access software. I have no real life experience with it, but I want see how things are done by other companies (other than Carlson,?ÿ as I'm using SurvCE). I'm?ÿ wondering if there is a way in Access to stake directly to the map elements like intersection of lines, end of line,?ÿ mid line, center arc, etc. without creating a point at that specific location. SurvCE lets you do that with its snap tools in the Map view. You can also draw new lines, or curves, and offset, extend, trim them, than stakeout to whatever you just draw without creating points.?ÿ
@ramses?ÿ
Personally (I'm sure most here won't agree with me) but I find access very inconsistent throughout and unintuitive, plus it's been extremely glitchy. My previous experiences were microsurvey fieldgenius version 10 (crashes a lot - but more intuitive and less glitches), magnet field second most recent version, never crashed, intuitive once I learned how to use it, not many bugs. The hardware was the downside to sokkia. Wording is confusing in access. Things like "store another" just to get it to backsight with 2 faces and average the result. Why use words that don't make sense?
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I'm?ÿ wondering if there is a way in Access to stake directly to the map elements like intersection of lines, end of line,?ÿ mid line, center arc, etc. without creating a point at that specific location. SurvCE lets you do that with its snap tools in the Map view. You can also draw new lines, or curves, and offset, extend, trim them, than stakeout to whatever you just draw without creating points.?ÿ
For the most part, yes. Lines, polylines and arcs are all staked out like alignments.
There is an option to explode lengthy polylines (can revert back on the fly) so you can then stake to individual lines & arcs (radius point included); turn on DXF vertices to be able to stake to a vertex without COGOing a new point. Rather than trim or extend, or offset a line, just input the station & offset (plus construction offset if needed). Skew offset lets you swing an azimuth for the offset, which can really be helpful for ramp wings and such. There are slope/side slope options if you have a 3D line and want to slope stake off it on the fly.
The only regular instance where Access has to create a new point before staking to it is for the intersection of two lines, mainly because they might be at two different elevations so the user must specify which one to use, or to average, or manually input. I use it for gridlines mostly, sometimes for when they need to see where waterline laterals cross curb face. (I load up a DTM at the same time to give them rough cuts/fills to finished grade too.)
It's very rare that I need to modify the actual linework in the field. If I do, it means I probably dropped the ball back in the office.
Plus, that linework is technically dynamic - it comes from a Civil 3D staking drawing, and if the design changes, so do any DXFs or CSVs that are affected. The DXFs, CSVs, DTMs, etc. are updated then stored on the cloud, so that when crews get on site they will check the cloud for any updates, download and overwrite, then go to work knowing they have the most current stakeout data.
We have many projects where crews might be swapped out day-to-day, so maintaining a central location of stakeout items is critical. But more than that, it makes it easier to update when things are split out in more manageable chunks. I don't have to do a massive data dump every time a single manhole gets moved.
Things like "store another" just to get it to backsight with 2 faces and average the result. Why use words that don't make sense?
In the case of total station work, Access stores both individual observations and Mean Turned Angles to make it easier to manipulate in the office. Changing auto average tolerances will keep that screen from popping up. The documentation discusses what average, store another, etc. mean. I personally like having all those options.
I've trained folks up on Access, Smartworx, SurvCE, and Survey Pro. While Survey Pro was probably the easiest to teach, Access is the most customizable, which can be a double-edged sword. We have crews that really get into it, others that barely scratch the surface of its capabilities.
@rover83?ÿ
Yeah, I want to see the difference in angle between the 2 faces, I just wish they reported it in something that made sense in the English language.?ÿ
