Trimble Business Center need to shift all elevations on project by a certain amount

If you really want to manually shift everything in TBC, you can just use the "Transform Survey Points" tool (on the Survey tab), but it will generate new grid values for your points, detaching and/or disabling observations, so the network will no longer be dynamic.

The TBC computation engine builds the network in a predefined order. First it looks at coordinate records, grabs the highest quality (control class) then loads observations off of those values (first levels, then GNSS, then total station), then returns and looks for the next level down coordinates (survey grade), loads more observations, rinse & repeat...

So the bottom line is that if everything is hanging off of primary control points, like most surveys do, modifying the elevations of those points will propagate that shift throughout the network. Bump those points and the network will follow.

This video goes pretty deep into the TBC computations and is one of the most underrated power hours in my opinion.

@rover83 Thank you. I have had no formal training on TBC and I usually get 15 minutes here an hour or so there kind of stuff unfortunately. I have watched some power hours on my own and will be watching this one as well. I reckon I do not want to undo my network adjustment for sure. We had two different robots with different accuracy. Then traverse with traverse kit and also poles with multi track along with network rtk and base and rover rtk. It took me a little time disabling some bod observations from rtk base and rover and some bad rounds that were not caught in the field before I got everything to look good and pass the ALTA specs . I reckon I will do it the old fashion way in excel for the elevation change if the constant doesnƒ??t change much throughout the site and I think it will not. But I will do some checks with ngs tools before. ?ÿUnfortunately at my office I am the only one who has used TBC for more than just downloading. ?ÿI mean the flags are great for a first look and check for qa/qc. If I ever get some training I might be worth my pay lol. But hey at-least now I have them using gnss for more than just setting starting points. They have been blown away of the productivity it has shown for topo setting control throughout a site and now crews can just go topo all they want with the robots. ?ÿ

I need to come spend some time with an expert like you and really get some good data management flow from office to field to office again and the. To cad folks. Thank you so much.?ÿ

Just export a csv and handle the transformations there.?ÿ That's probably the easiest while still maintaining the integrity of your TBC files.?ÿ?ÿ

Or, do a save as on your TBC file and use the Transform survey points option.?ÿ I've never done this with an entire file but I assume if you have some points set to Control quality, they may not shift. This also wont play nicely with any network adjustments you have done.?ÿ TBC is great but it has it's limitations.?ÿ I'd go the excel route for sure!

@wa-id-surveyor I think you are correct on control quality. Yes I think I will do the excel option. I am going to try exporting the points and then import points only into a new tbc project and try that transformation routine out as if I only raise the elevation it should be a check on my excel data and if I am performing it the correct way in TBC. ?ÿ

I am sure if I had the time I would be able to understand TBC more and understand how to manage the data better. ?ÿWhere I am its kinda not the best way. Create a job and do everything control property corners topo stake out all in same job over weeks of data. Sorting through it all is slow and I am sure if I set TBC up I could better manage all of it. When I go out I usually do my control in one job rtk robot and property corners. Then different job for topo etc. that way once i do an adjustment i am only dealing with priority data. Then bring in the topo data on top of that and everything falls into place. Makes it much easier running alta report as well. Especially when point names and numbers are all over the place and 4000 points lol. Now that i am i between exams I should get more time to study TBC. I hope.?ÿ

oh and thank you I appreciate the help for sure.?ÿ

The NCAT tool on the NGS website is reasonably friendly. Iƒ??ve used it to convert things recently. And it is the official transformation tool. You can upload text files to it. The only thing is the descriptions get left behind. Also it downloads a sort of weird CSV file. It helps to turn off all the columns you donƒ??t need.

@dave-karoly Yes for sure I have used it before and you are correct about the description and or attributes. And formatting. I made a macro years ago for using geotrans and vertcon and other transformation tools so I could rejoin all the data back together. Before i used TBC. So I was kinda looking to avoid that with all the points. I will still have to create another csv file to go to cad after because they said if i had formulas in the csv file it would mess civil3d up.?ÿ

They already miss data for some reasons in civil3d. Points just randomly donƒ??t import into civil3d from the csv files and it could be in the middle end or beginning. ?ÿThey thought it was Trimble access all the time. But i said all of certain areas has data and I checked the csv file and it had the points missing but civil3d did not show them. I need to learn civil3d for myself so i can figure out why.?ÿ

The absence of an elevation shift tool is about the only gripe I have about Star*Net.?ÿ I tried to get Ron Sawyer to include it decades ago -- the coding would be pretty trivial, IMHO -- but it never happened.?ÿ I'm surprised that TBC doesn't offer one either.

@jim-frame I thought it had one honestly but i was in a rush this afternoon and could not find one. Well I found the transform points option mentioned above and that might work normally but I have a crazy network adjustment going on. The other option I was going to consider if and only after I verify that navd88 to ngvd29 stays constant on my site I could just edit a good point in the middle and constrain it vertically to flow out and then check randomly around site and re perform the lqa. That way.?ÿ

@olemanriver I donƒ??t use Civil3D anymore. I canƒ??t even figure out how to import points in the current version. I prefer Microsurvey because itƒ??s a lot more friendly for a simple country Land Surveyor like me.

I can turn just about anything into an acceptable CSV pretty quickly in Excel. I usually add a worksheet I call CSV generator then I use = and point to the appropriate cell in the other worksheets. Save the xlsx then in the CSV generator worksheet saveas CSV comma delimited file, then close excel without saving. I always get a clean CSV point file that way. Excel is the least troublesome software out there really, pretty much glitch free.

@dave-karoly You said a mouthful. ?ÿI will try that little trick for sure. I use to think i was pretty good power user in excel many years ago. Then all the young folks saw everything I did in excel and just re wrote everything in python and I stopped using it and would just tell them coder what I wanted and how I wanted it to interface with other things and they made majic work. Now I have no python gurus around so back to relearning excel again. Lol. And to see if I can remember how to do macros. If you donƒ??t use it you lose it i guess.?ÿ

I have not drafted in so many years I am supposed to be getting training on civil3d soon. But I am with you on civil3d not being the most surveyor friendly. I have been looking at Traverse PC very hard and trying to see if I can do all my work in TBC . Just have not had the time to do much. Drafted some building and cogo deeds in with TBC was not hard at all. But final plats and all I have not done yet. When I am in office itƒ??s usually to do what I am now adjustments or a quick qa/qc of raw data.?ÿ

Microsurvey I only saw this past week on vacation as I helped a friend and it seems very intuitive for sure. Do you do your final drafting in that?

@olemanriver Yes, everything is done in Microsurvey.

I havenƒ??t tried to draft in TBC.

Im not a programmer, I mostly use Excel like a glorified calculator. But itƒ??s a handy program.

@dave-karoly That makes two of us. If I can ever get my land surveyor skills back up and get licensed. All I want to do is just rural boundary surveys. Not many companies around here that do those. All the lidar and big jobs is what most companies go after. I have been blessed and have enjoyed everything I have learned and been able to survey all around the world but my passion has always been in good ole boundary surveys. ?ÿI guess i have a screw loose as my friends say. Why do you love being in the woods or on some farm? I just do. ?ÿFinding that old corner thatƒ??s been lonely for all those years and no one has dressed up in flagging. Or an old logging road bed no one has noticed that points to the property line. Fun fun fun.?ÿ

Posted by: @olemanriver

@jim-frame I thought it had one honestly but i was in a rush this afternoon and could not find one. Well I found the transform points option mentioned above and that might work normally but I have a crazy network adjustment going on. The other option I was going to consider if and only after I verify that navd88 to ngvd29 stays constant on my site I could just edit a good point in the middle and constrain it vertically to flow out and then check randomly around site and re perform the lqa. That way.?ÿ

Not sure what menu to look in the help for vertical adjustment, thatƒ??s what is what called in TGO, I guess there is a TBC equivalent.

if you make a selection set with your control points you could adjust only these points, then recalc, afterwards you can even undo the whole operation to get back to where you started.

?ÿ

Posted by: @olemanriver

The other option I was going to consider if and only after I verify that navd88 to ngvd29 stays constant on my site I could just edit a good point in the middle and constrain it vertically to flow out and then check randomly around site and re perform the lqa. That way.?ÿ

Unless you're working on a very large site or in a very unique part of the country, applying a constant shift to your primary control points and readjusting will work just fine. There's no reason to overcomplicate things.

The vertical is based upon the primary control that observations are taken from or referenced to. Enter NAVD88 values to get an NAVD88 project, NGVD29 values to get a NGVD29 project. Start off with control points in the right datum and use those to process the?ÿ TBC project.

I've seen folks get burned when everything got bumped in an Excel spreadsheet that's over in another folder. They'll go back to the original TBC project, pull all the points out of there and just run with them, not understanding that the job was not processed in the correct vertical datum (as it could have been from the start).

I say keep it simple and keep it consistent. Work in the project datum from start to finish.