Greg Rodger, post: 385489, member: 11989 wrote: I was taught many many labs of classic methods. Sun shots, chaining, stadia, etc, etc. After being in the field for a while I wish we'd learned more cogo and cad software. It would save so much money not having to hire a technician if I knew it better. Alas my surveying engineering degree had to balance the old and new.
It shouldn't be one or the other. You need a well-rounded education in the way to do math without a computer and how the old tools were used as well as being able to use modern surveying techniques and computer software.
flyin solo, post: 385493, member: 8089 wrote: i would posit that some component of the preponderance of wacky street layout is coincidental to the rise of "planning" as a dedicated profession, and the need of everyone to justify their own existence. seems like while a good bit of it is done out of the necessity of considering topography and/or natural impediments to "traditional" grid layout, a significant chunk if it seemingly makes no sense other than to satisfy the artsy fartsy tendencies and predilictions of people who are an inch deep and mile wide with their "holistic" bag of tricks.
(can you tell i've been dealing with comments from a city planner all day?)
I do agree with you, they believe the curvey is street the less likely someone is going to really speed down it.
Tom Adams, post: 385495, member: 7285 wrote: It shouldn't be one or the other. You need a well-rounded education in the way to do math without a computer and how the old tools were used as well as being able to use modern surveying techniques and computer software.
In a perfect world we would learn everything in 4 years and be job ready. As is I have yet to use sun shots, or tape sag calcs. I would have preferred a lil more practical education.
Greg Rodger, post: 385447, member: 11989 wrote: I agree, we studied the fundamentals but actually surveying with instruments that are neither made nor serviced anymore is fruitless. I would never invest in such instruments neither would the majority of professional surveyors so making new members familiar with them is no more than hazing.
Hazing would be when the lawyer has a surveyor on the stand and ask the surveyor if he has followed in the footsteps of the original surveyor and applied the same tools as used in the original survey to arrive at the findings he has certified, and he the lawyer knowing that the opposing surveyor who is going to be the next witness will answer "Yes, I have taken the very same type of equipment into the field and retraced the survey and have updated those locations with modern equipment for my findings".
I am not saying that you need to own a circa 1750 compass.
Having any survey grade compass to follow that period of survey is very useful.
Hands on operation of a circa 1750 compass is something every surveyor needs to do, along with a solar compass and every other antiquated instrument or piece of equipment the surveyor can get their hands on in class, seminar, borrow, buy or rent from a friend.
😀
Scott Ellis, post: 385496, member: 7154 wrote: I do agree with you, they believe the curvey is street the less likely someone is going to really speed down it.
my favorite part of typical local "design" is having a gigantic- straight- boulevard (say 100') that shoots off the main road abutting the subdivision, and which is the main artery off which all the rest of the side streets in the subdivision flow. the entire thing is then walled off from the rest of outside civilization. the effect would appear to encourage somebody wanting to, say, steal a bike-riding kid from a sidewalk and haul hindquarters right on out with little in the way to stop them.
A Harris, post: 385500, member: 81 wrote: Hazing would be when the lawyer has a surveyor on the stand and ask the surveyor if he has followed in the footsteps of the original surveyor and applied the same tools as used in the original survey to arrive at the findings he has certified, and he the lawyer knowing that the opposing surveyor who is going to be the next witness will answer "Yes, I have taken the very same type of equipment into the field and retraced the survey and have updated those locations with modern equipment for my findings".
I am not saying that you need to own a circa 1750 compass.
Having any survey grade compass to follow that period of survey is very useful.
Hands on operation of a circa 1750 compass is something every surveyor needs to do, along with a solar compass and every other antiquated instrument or piece of equipment the surveyor can get their hands on in class, seminar, borrow, buy or rent from a friend.😀
Ouch, that would be harsh. I would simply give a professional opinion based on established professional standards in my jurisdiction. As long as you adjust for magnetic north of the reference year it's pretty easy to use modern instruments. I've done it and come in within millimeters. No need of a survey compass.
Do we say his name 3 times, or will he just magically appear to discuss the ability to hit modern monuments that close with today's magical intruments?
Greg Rodger, post: 385499, member: 11989 wrote: In a perfect world we would learn everything in 4 years and be job ready. As is I have yet to use sun shots, or tape sag calcs. I would have preferred a lil more practical education.
I think that there is absolutely no education, or even career, where someone thinks they know everything there is to know in surveying. I have been surveying for more than a decade and I still learn something new all the time. I learn when I talk to other surveyors. I learn in class. I learn when I dig up a new monument I have not seen before. You never learn everything.
Trust me, you knowing how those sun shots and tape sag calcs make you so much better at what you do.
Of course a good solution would be to avoid properties with legal issues spanning back to the reconstruction era. 😉
Greg Rodger, post: 385508, member: 11989 wrote: avoid properties with legal issues spanning back to the reconstruction era
Where's the fun in that?? That's my bread and butter!
Greg Rodger, post: 385508, member: 11989 wrote: Of course a good solution would be to avoid properties with legal issues spanning back to the reconstruction era. 😉
How can you tell there is no legal issue, until you perform the survey? If the client mentions to me they are fighting with the neighbor or thinks the fence is in the wrong place, well the price does go up.
Tom is right.
Greg Rodger, post: 385508, member: 11989 wrote: Of course a good solution would be to avoid properties with legal issues spanning back to the reconstruction era. 😉
those are the ones i want! i'd be just as happy if everyone else avoided them, i'll take 'em all.
Scott Ellis, post: 385511, member: 7154 wrote: How can you tell there is no legal issue, until you perform the survey? If the client mentions to me they are fighting with the neighbor or thinks the fence is in the wrong place, well the price does go up.
We are kind of spoiled. Only name in town/ county/ several counties. We have all the records. We have a good idea when something is amiss.
I like a good challenge as long as firearms stay out of my face. Lol
Someone above said they would pay money to do such a retracement. I have a degree in surveying but I started out with a 20" K&E and a 100' steel chain. A few years back they used to put on a Compass and Chain ( 10 vara link chain ) in Jefferson, Texas, the first one of these was quite a education even to me who had a lot of woodland retracement experience. Have you ever wondered why the GLO used a 2 pole (33') chain instead of the standard 66' Gunters chain? I can tell you 1 reason and I am sure there are many more, but I challenge any 2 surveyors on here to try and plumb a 33' cast iron link chain much less a 66' one. Yes field experience is critical and should be a requirement for taking the LSIT. I was more educated by the unlicensed party chiefs I worked under than any professor I ever had in college as to how to do a proper retracement survey and this is the critical education that is lacking in our 4 year degree graduates that I encounter today.
Greg Rodger, post: 385517, member: 11989 wrote: I like a good challenge as long as firearms stay out of my face. Lol
i'd almost rather see it, after having been shot at through some brush by a guy who thought i was dinner.
Modern equipment is always changing and even if you studied something in school, it might not be the latest version or CAD or instruments and software may have changed since you left school. Learning the legal principles and practices is the professional end of it and that is what school should mainly teach. But use of different instruments is also of value. You need to know the strengths and weakness of old equipment, and also what is and isn't of value with new equipment. rtk vs static and that sort of thing. I like being able to still calculate with my calculator as well as using a big fast computer.
This is off topic but I would love to know people's opinions on traditional vs digital field notes. I fall in the traditional camp for sure.
flyin solo, post: 385493, member: 8089 wrote: i would posit that some component of the preponderance of wacky street layout is coincidental to the rise of "planning" as a dedicated profession, and the need of everyone to justify their own existence. seems like while a good bit of it is done out of the necessity of considering topography and/or natural impediments to "traditional" grid layout, a significant chunk if it seemingly makes no sense other than to satisfy the artsy fartsy tendencies and predilictions of people who are an inch deep and mile wide with their "holistic" bag of tricks.
(can you tell i've been dealing with comments from a city planner all day?)
the most salient way that i can personally relate to this is through my main hobby/stress reliever- running. everyone has a favorite running shoe, if you do the kind of mileage that keeps most of us who do from otherwise being a rotten alcoholic or scofflaw of whatever variety. every couple years- at most- the shoe company will go change up a shoe design for no other reason than they have designers on staff and they aren't gonna pay them just to pat themselves on the back for making a winner. so instead of selling somebody like me another 8 or 10 pairs of the same running shoe over the course of a couple years, they lose some part of their sales and have to pay the designers to yet redesign the shoes again to try and recover their old faithful clients. there's some old saying about leaving well enough alone...
Spaghetti subdivisions. Streets curving every which way to slow traffic down for safety, while making blind curves and blind driveways, real safe. It drives surveyors mad, engineers mad, snow plows mad, and makes it very easy to screw up street lines. I wish grid design would make a comeback.