Page 1 of 18 Field-to-Finish, SurvCE and Hardware Updated 1/26/2017
Survey Field-to-Finish, in Carlson Survey and SurvCE Minnesota Surveyor s Conference February 8-9, 2017 Bruce Carlson, PE President bcarlson@carlsonsw.co Un-Planned Field-to-Finish (React to Codes) Field-to-Finish capabilities are one of the ost untapped sources of autoation of field survey easureent. The ost basic use of field-to-finish is to autoatically draw 3D polyline break lines based on field coding. The best practices for field-to-finish are to design a coding syste that the survey crews use repeatedly to generate layer-based linework for breaklines, edge-ofpaveents, streas, buildings, fence lines, etc., along with point sybols for objects like trees and poles. But even where there is no advanced planning, no syste in place, field-to-finish can be used to react to whatever field codes (descriptions) were assigned, changing on a day-today basis. This is not necessarily good field practice, but it useful and necessary, for exaple, when field surveying is contracted out, and the field codes used cannot be predicted. And it also can salvage and autoate in-house survey field work where codes are ade up on a daily basis. Page 2 of 18 Field-to-Finish, SurvCE and Hardware Updated 1/26/2017
Exaple: Mantopo and on-the-fly 3D Polyline Breaklines. The file Mantopo.dwg is provided with Carlson Software office products containing the Survey Module. Open the file and note on the left approxiately 300 points to be contoured. Select the coand Triangulate & Contour and turn off all Triangulation output in the Triangulate tab and in the Contour tab, contour with a 1 interval and Draw Index Contours at a 5 interval, with 1 Line Width. Then select the point objects by Window or Crossing selection, and obtain the contour ap shown below. The first thing to notice is that that streas surrounding the site are poorly drawn. Page 3 of 18 Field-to-Finish, SurvCE and Hardware Updated 1/26/2017
The lack of breaklines controlling contouring of the streas around the perieter creates isolated low points and a wavy effect, ainly because the bank topo shots repeatedly triangulated fro the left bank across to the right bank, because they easured with ore frequency, at a tighter interval, than the strea shots. The old-fashioned way of iproving the ap would be to draw triangulate lines and edit the, then re-contour (contours can also auto-update based on editing of the triangles). But a far ore efficient approach is to draw the 3D polylines representing the ditch lines and the bank lines, based on field codes. Contouring within Carlson always uses any 3D polyline in the selection set as a breakline. The 3D polyline does not have to be preidentified as a breakline just by being in the selection set, it is autoatically used to iprove the contouring. The quickest way to draw out the 3D polyline, assuing field codes exist for the breaklines, is to use field-to-finish. Use the coand List Points or Edit Points to review the field codes associated with the points. Code 17 was used for top of bank shots and code 18 was used for base of ditch easureents. Note also that if you only have the points drawn on the screen, and no CRD file, you can create a CRD fro the screen points using Coordinate File Utilities (coand CFU), Update CRD fro Screen. Page 4 of 18 Field-to-Finish, SurvCE and Hardware Updated 1/26/2017
Step 1: The Draw Field-to-Finish coand is found under the Survey pulldown enu in the Survey Module. Before selecting the coand, enter U for Undo to reove the contours above, or use Edit, Erase by Layer and pick the two contour layers to erase the. Now select Draw Field-to-Finish, select Mantopo.crd file as propted and ake a new.fld file called Mantopo.fld. Then the dialog below appears: Do not click OK, since we have not established the on-the-fly field codes yet. First, change Entities to Draw to Lines only. Then click Edit Codes/Points in the lower left. In the next dialog, click the Code Table by CRD option, also in the lower left. This is the technique used to create a feature code list directly fro the unique CRD file used for the job. Page 5 of 18 Field-to-Finish, SurvCE and Hardware Updated 1/26/2017
As propted, choose option Append within Code Table by CRD. You can also choose to create a New fld file directly using this coand. This creates the table shown below: If you click Code 17 and click Edit, you can change the top of bank code 17 to a 3D polyline, which will auto-draw the 3D polyline for this code. This procedure should then be repeated for Code 18, used for the base of ditch. Note that you can double-click 17 and 18 in the dialog above and go straight to the editor. With these changes ade and saved, the Draw option can be selected to draw the 3D Polylines that will iprove the contouring. However, it should be pointed out in advance that when you take this Code fro CRD approach, it is unlikely that the source file will have start and end codes. So we should anticipate that the top of bank easureents will likely draw fro one top of bank to the next, and the crossover polyline segents will need to be erased. Siilarly, ditch 3D polylines will ost likely cross fro one ditch segent to another, requiring that segents will need to be erased. The on-the-fly ethod of Field-to-Finish will in alost all cases created soe wayward lines, since using codes only, without special end line codes, will lead to extra line segents. Page 6 of 18 Field-to-Finish, SurvCE and Hardware Updated 1/26/2017
With both Code 17 and Code 18 edited to becoe 3D Polylines as above, clicking Save, then OK in the Draw dialog, will lead to the ap shown below: Page 7 of 18 Field-to-Finish, SurvCE and Hardware Updated 1/26/2017
Step 2: Reove Polyline Segent. Use this coand, found under the Edit pulldown enu, Reove Polyline, Reove Polyline Segent, to reove the top-of-bank segent that draws across the red base of ditch shown. This occurs because on-the-fly Field-to-Finish, using Code fro CRD, typically akes use of ore rando coordinate file coding that does not include any special end line coding. So Reove Polyline Segent is a frequent Step 2 in this procedure. Break polyline at reoval or keep continuous [<Break>/Continuous]? Enter for Break Select polyline segent to reove: Select the top of bank segent shown below by arrow Select polyline segent to reove: Press Enter The segent is then reoved. Page 8 of 18 Field-to-Finish, SurvCE and Hardware Updated 1/26/2017
Step 3: Repeat Triangulate & Contour with the sae settings as before, and be sure to include the 3D polylines in the selection set. Because soe of the top of bank and base of ditch 3D polylines still cross, an error log will appear. Page 9 of 18 Field-to-Finish, SurvCE and Hardware Updated 1/26/2017
Click the + opposite Crossing Breaklines to open up the tree and display all crossing breaklines, and only one appears. Highlight it and click Zoo To and the crossing is pointed out above. You can zoo in and repeat Reove Polyline Segent and repeat Triangulate & Contour, or accept the iproved contour ap as is, shown below in 3D and in plan view. Use Quick Profile under the Profile pulldown enu in the Civil odule to review the quality of the ditch capture. Note that the Quick Profile reveals a trapezoidal ditch on both sides of the site. Page 10 of 18 Field-to-Finish, SurvCE and Hardware Updated 1/26/2017
Planned Field-to-Finish Using Code Syste Best field practices are to develop a field-to-finish code table, including codes for starting and ending lines and doing arcs, that are used by the field codes and which can ost efficiently process the field data into nearly coplete final drawings. Carlson software ships with a Carlson.fld file which is a very extensive field-to-finish file that can be adopted optionally. Or you can develop your own and use just the codes necessary for your work. Step 1: Load the drawing Parker.dwg and under the Points pulldown, Set CRD file to Parker.crd. The Parker.dwg file contains ainly the layer settings that will autoatically reveal colors of distinct layers. This illustrates the advantage of using a drawing teplate file with layers pre-established, so as created in field-to-finish, the desired coloring occurs. Go to the coand Edit Points and look through the field codes used. For exaple, EOG would stand for edge of gravel and EOSH would represent edge of shoulder. Step 2: Select coand Draw Field-to-Finish and click on Edit Codes/Points. Double-click on the word Edit next to the EOGR code and note that it is set to be a 3D Polyline. Click on Edit Points and note that curves begin with BC (for begin curve) and that lines end with E (for end line). Such special codes ust be set within Code Table Settings, option Special Codes. Click Special Codes and change Begin Curve to BC and End Line to E. Page 11 of 18 Field-to-Finish, SurvCE and Hardware Updated 1/26/2017
Click OK and then Exit the feature code list dialog, and finally click OK to the Draw Field to Finish dialog shown below: Page 12 of 18 Field-to-Finish, SurvCE and Hardware Updated 1/26/2017
This leads to the drawing that appears below. Use Triangulate & Contour to contour it. Page 13 of 18 Field-to-Finish, SurvCE and Hardware Updated 1/26/2017
SurvCE Take Data & Drawings to Field With SurvCE, you can siply copy your office CRD files and DWG files and use the directly in the field. You can stakeout by using CAD-like snapping to endpoints, intersections, nearest and all available CAD snaps. CAD features such as 3D Polyline Offset, Extend by Distance, Tri and Fillet are directly available in SurvCE, which has the strongest CAD functionality in a Windows Mobile environent. Shown below is a fully 3D drawing loaded into SurvCE using the coand Iport DWG. After inserting the Eastpit.dwg file, zoo in as shown and use the coand Cogo, Create Points, Draw Locate Points (siilar to the sae coand in Carlson office products) to create point 1 as shown. In the Map screen, use the lower left icon to freeze/thaw point layers. Page 14 of 18 Field-to-Finish, SurvCE and Hardware Updated 1/26/2017
In the ode GPS Siulation, you can go to Equip enu, option Localization, and localize to point 1. Be sure to Monitor first until you fix, exactly siulating the field experience. Within Monitor, you can view your satellites. The arrows indicate whether the satellite is rising or falling in the sky. Now select Localize, Points tab, click Add and choose point 1 and localize to it. This akes the survey arrow start at point 1 as you practice SurvCE in GPS Siulation ode. One of the useful features for ines is the ability to stake out any grid or DTM surface and view cut and fill results both in plan view and in section view. Siply load a TIN or Grid file ade in Carlson Civil or Mining Modules, or you can even ake the TIN file directly within SurvCE as shown below: Page 15 of 18 Field-to-Finish, SurvCE and Hardware Updated 1/26/2017
Within the SurvCE Triangulate & Contour coand, turn off Draw Contours (they already exist), Include Contours and Breaklines in the selection set, and Save Triangulation to File by nae (Eastpit.Tin). Now go back to the Menus and within the Survey Menu, select Elevation Difference. Click OK (green check), load the Eastpit.TIN file and ove the arrow (indicating field position) with the left-right arrow keys, going faster with the up-down arrow keys. If you click the Plan button in the upper left, you can see your position in cross section view: This is just a very brief tour of SurvCE. Its strong links to the office software and CAD files in general akes it the ideal copanion. Page 16 of 18 Field-to-Finish, SurvCE and Hardware Updated 1/26/2017
SurvPC and Expanded Power SurvPC is the PC equivalent of SurvCE. But it has 2 advantages: (1) Because it runs on high-speed Windows XP and Windows 7 PC coputers, the progra can load uch larger files than SurvCE and the progra runs uch faster when large files are loaded, and (2) SurvPC has the special extra advantage that it will direct read ESRI files in the for of MXD files with their associated databases. Copanies that use ESRI for aspects of apping can now take these files to the field. If the PC used in the field (eg. Carlson Supervisor) contains ArcMap or ArcView fro ESRI, or if the ESRI engine is included in SurvPC (added cost: $1000), then SurvPC will window directly into the graphics engine and present ESRI-quality graphics in the field, and direct access the database for field-editing or adding of data. Note that when using SurvPC with ESRI files, even text and hatching becoe available, all based on zoo level, tapping the dynaics of the ESRI engine. Ites can be edited by clicking on the, without the issuance of any specific coand. Page 17 of 18 Field-to-Finish, SurvCE and Hardware Updated 1/26/2017
Carlson Software Inc. 102 West 2nd Street P3D Topo and 3D Field-to-Finish The Precision 3D Topo progra fro Carlson uses the sae coding syste used in SurvCE, SurvPC and Carlson Survey to create not only 2D drawings but fully 3D field-to-finish drawings as shown above. Such rendering-style drawings are useful for presentations to clients to win work and to illustrate work. Page 18 of 18 Field-to-Finish, SurvCE and Hardware Updated 1/26/2017