Send me your email address. Ill send you a tech sheet on Trimble letterhead about the problem.
Store Points in Stakeout with Prefix or Sufix results in overwriting the original calculated cord and the measured cord by averaging the two. Hard to not qualify that as a valid complaint, perhaps it has been changed but that is how it was explained to me by the vendor.
Leica puts out the best hard and soft that I have used, by far. In my opinion what Leica should do is hire USA specific manual writers and require compentent, trained vendors assist with set up with purchase of gear, included with purchase price.
In my area certain vendors have instead focused on selling third party soft and hardware which has shaped the way that many companies survey, not for the better in my estimation.
Getting the DC running other soft to dance with the gun is a truley frustrating and cumbersome way to work and since the gun is front in center I think people have a tendency to blame the gun.
R.J.,
The only hold button on the TPS1200 is when you are setting an azimuth for your setup reference. The hold button that appears in older firmware is in this mode when setting a starting angle that you entered so you can enter a value and then turn to it then release the angle readings.
Kurt,
Unfortunately all vendors are pretty much going proprietary with software that they produce internally. It is an issue to when a third party software has issues that the user always thinks the problem is with the hardware. This is the case sometimes but most of the time it is with the third party software.
Simple sets in the Viva software is a needed improvement. You can do a Face 1/ Face 2 measurement to a point but you cannot go back to the backsight. So, this is not a true set because you do not have an independent measurement in Face 2 to the back sight. The Traverse application is where the system want you to turn sets and you can have multiple points in the Traverse .... traverse points and side shots. I agree that there has been a need for a long time for a simple set collection inside the Survey application.
I am not sure about the staking to a line issue. I think this can be fixed if you can let me know what is the issue and I can then write up an explanation. It may be just the issue with the difference in the Stake to Line functional versus the Measure to Line functionality.
LGO is not needed for data export if you are not using the Leica database into LGO for QC of the data. You can export a .RAW, RW5, FBK, or a XML file off of the CS15 directly so you can just transfer these files from the controller to your office software. I am not sure if this helps. There is the ability to do custom ASCII files if needed or simple ASCII files but then you lose the raw data.
The best place to update your codelist is in LGO but if you do updates in the field on the controller these can be add to you codelist in LGO.
I need to go back to the Leica "wishlist" where can enter needed improvements and get back on the sets of angle need inside the Survey application.
I appreciate this input. We can provide some documentation or emails on these issues except the simple angle set in Survey. That needs to be fixed.
Party Chief,
When I worked within Leica Tech Support it was a constant struggle to get documentation done and also handle support calls and emails. No excuses... but it was a struggle. The current setup within Leica is the the dealers and direct sales are responsible for keeping themselves trained with Leica's help and then training the customers. There absolutely needs to be more online resources to search for needed information. We try to do this ourselves but still need to dedicate more time. We always include one day of training at a minimum in our sales and then answer the phone when customers have issues. I am not sure what everyone else is doing.
I understand the issue with the stakeout points if you do not want to use a suffix or prefix. The wish right now for development is to be able to also hjave an option to have a offset value for point numbering. For example... if you stake out point 100 you might add a offset of 1000 so the as-staked position would be recorded as 1100. Maybe this would be better.
I should know this but I will test it to make sure. Yes Leica averages coordinates but I think that the as-staked positions is not flagged to be used in the averaged coordinate. The flag in the averaging should be set to "No" for the as-staked position.
I will test this and get back to you on this point. I need to make sure of this.
I appreciate this feedback. Good points!
I've got the 1200 GPS & TCRA TS.
I like the hardware; can't recall ever getting bad numbers.
The software: better than the 500 series which was pretty basic, and seemed to have a European flavor.
It has some tough stuff for me though.
Rotation & Transformation: Nerve racking since it's non-reversible, and if you keep the old numbers by renaming them, it's a mess. It should keep better track of the process and give you the inputs in a display with an undo option.
Starting a job: Why should it be so tough? If you assume coordinates, it's a minor pain.
TS Setup: In the Instrument screen, it defaults to some other job you've had going and imports that point and since it's a control point, it's difficult to delete it. If you have that same number point in your current job, you now have two. Now try to find which is which. You can delete one, and it's usually the right one, but sometimes not.
Point output: Lord knows why it won't collate the numbers instead of sorting them by time, but I don't like it. An added PITA is the initialization points are exported: RTCM-Ref 0989
It won't (or I can't figure out how to) do perpendicular offset, a basic function.
Power Search for the TS: Nice, but the other routine should "call" the PS as a sub function. It's really aggravating to watch it try to find you.
It's got a lot of nice programs; I like the reference line routine especially.
I really miss SMI though. Stan was THE MAN. It was easy, powerful, fast, and intuitive.