One of my mentors did the most fabulous and to scale sketches in his notes. He originally hand drafted and his sketches were just works of art. I've never had the patience or skill to come anywhere close, however I've always found that the process of drawing a sketch forces me to slow down and really get into the details of my survey and I've found it a great aid in avoiding confusion and potential blunders. Is this a lost art?
Just because I'm paranoid, doesn't mean they aren't out to get me.
I've mostly only sketched manholes for topos and have sketched monuments when requested, but for the most part it's much quicker and more accurate to spam a bunch of pictures with my phone.
I use field books when levelling and construction staking. These notes sometimes include a rudimentary sketch. I may sometimes use them for boundary - extended descriptions of found monuments - but photos usually do the job for me there.
I no longer use them for control or topo. I've been an F2f disciple since 1993. Sketches kind of drifted away with that.
I still keep keep one with me all the time. Use it for sketches and or notes that I believe are needed. Especially on boundary surveys. If a land owner of subject property or adjoining owners start telling me my grandparents said this or that. That old boat was placed on the back line. I usually grab it out and take notes. Same on construction site. Contractor ask for this or that I write it down and have had them sign it before as I had no change orders etc.
CAD is to drafting as F2F is to sketches. In both cases, it feels like a bit of beauty was lost to homely function.
I no longer do elaborate sketches, but I sketch up control and monument recovery ties and accessories. This is especially true on base points. If my five minute sketch reduces frustration and lost time for the next guy it's a good investment.
I sketch. Caps always get sketched and a thorough description. On boundary work I will sometimes sketch stuff out, really just depends on the project. Larger projects are much more likely to get sketched for me. On design work it really just depends, if I think I'll remember how it looked and pictures are sufficient then no sketch, if it's funky then it gets sketched. I also run a thorough F2F program, so often times a bunch of stuff is getting duplicated in the controller and in the fieldbook. But, I think of the fieldbook as a source for a layman to be able to read through it as a stand alone product and understand what I did.
The county requires us to do sketches in the field books. Recently, I've done a project that was split into two smaller projects. I felt my sketches helped consolidate the projects into something meaningful and easy to look at.
I will make a progress print from CAD and use that for notes like atmospheric, found survey marks with full description, and traverse notes. The print goes in the file with that day's print of the survey data. I have field books, but seldom use them, except for leveling. It's hard to remember what field book has the notes when looking at the computer or the project file.
Historic boundaries and conservation efforts.
Kind of an aside. Years back I was thumbing through the field notes done by a USFS note keeper. Remember back in the day when they actually had someone assigned to just keep notes? I notice in the upper right hand corner of each page was a little hand drawn cartoon character, I think it was similar to Wimpy from Popeye, 'I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today'. Any way, it suddenly occurred to me to take the pages and fan them quickly and sure enough it was a complete cartoon series in stop gap animation. The guy was really talented, and apparently quite bored.
Just because I'm paranoid, doesn't mean they aren't out to get me.
Don't know how much it is actually used in the real world but Trimble Access lets you use the Draw toolbar to add linework, polygons or text to any image in the job, including photographs and screen captures you have created from the Map screen or the Surface inspection.
Haven’t used a field book in over 3 years except for a level loophitch I might do once a year (multi-observation RTK and total station observation in a network adjustment is just that good). I’m creating the cad dwg in the field since lines and curves draw on my screen as I record points. See a line going askew? I go and fix the code.
time to write info in a field book when using a much better “digital field book” seems silly these days.