Hi guys - I've been given a dxf file to stake out from. Its got tons of data one it including 210 layers.There are cars, trucks, toilets, trees, text everywhere, contours - its a mess.
I don't want to import it into my Access on my Trimble TSC3 and then turn of the layers in there as the screen is too small and will fry my eyes and brain!
What do you all do??ÿ
Provided by whom? The contractor? The designer? The surveyor??ÿ We rarely receive and use data provided by others.?ÿ If we do receive data from others to stake we check it against the plans and then create our own staking drawings and files to use.?ÿ Using files from others is a high liability and prone to errors.
Bring it into CAD and wblock (remove from drawing option selected) out everything that isn't relevant. (Wblock it so that you have a drawing that is a record of everything you removed - if you just delete it then you won't have an easy way to check that nothing was inadvertently deleted.)
When you have a CAD drawing that only has the items you are interested in - create a dxf and import it to your controller - if it looks reasonable send the dxf file to the contractor/engineer/whoever and tell them that this is what you are going to stake unless they tell you that the dxf file does not represent their design... maybe something like this: "Here's the dxf file that we are going to stake from. It's based on the dxf file that you sent us. Let me know if there are any issues with it as we had to delete a lot of items to get into a useable format. I don't believe any entities were moved but let me know if you see anything askew. Thanks - Joe Surveyor"
Depending on your location in the chain of command you or someone will need to check your contract. Every contract I have ever seen says 'use of electronically supplied data is at your own risk or something along those lines'. Meaning they will supply it but are not on the hook for any errors contained within it. That's very standard in this area.
I sent you a PM, I'll try to help you out. Same as everyone else said though, be careful with liability.
Yeah - you have to watch the contract.
We prefer to stake from the stamped drawings - we state in our proposal "stakes will be set based on the final sealed and signed plans". These days the engineers are often producing plan sets that don't have enough to stake from so we submit an RFI. It's cheaper and easier for them to send us the .dwg - which is not in the owners best interest as the check that they get by us comping from the plans doesn't happen. Anyway - we stake from the sealed drawings or move the responsibility for the dwg accuracy back onto the designer by making it clear that the final sealed and signed plans didn't have adequate info on them and that we are staking from the .dwg/.dxf per their request. We are cooperative but we won't take on responsibility for their incomplete plans.
I use a template dwg and xref the drawing in my template. Then i ncopy the necessary data to my template and ditch the xref.
When everything is staked out i always make a pdf plan with indications of what is staked and with which plans this was done. Also i refer to the e-mail which has these drawings.
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You got to be careful with dwg, often times the architect or engineer likes to scale up or rotate the entire drawing for their ease and the coordinates get messed up.?ÿ
that is almost all the time over here. The word xref into a surveyors plan is non existence. We have to check for ourselfs and discuss our findings with the architect and/or contractor.
Sometimes plans are georeferenced but 95% of the time it's just local drawing. That's when they call us
