Civil 3D Worldwide

Blimey! This post sat in the draft unnoticed for days! Well, better late than never…

Leica announces that their total stations have the onboard ability to convert 1200 Series jobs to Autodesk Fieldbook (FBK) files for use with LDT, Civil 3D and other software. This tool is part of their software suite onboard 1200 Series Instruments.

This component is called Field Data Extractor (FDE) and the latest version is 5.10. Civil 3D users with Leica jigger can download it from:

http://www.leica-geosystems.com/corporate/en/downloads/lgs_page_catalog.htm?cid=4503

Here is the extract from that page:

So, what’s the big idea with this? Most surveying instruments support FBK format these days. Right? Well, that’s quite true, but it’s not always that simple to implement available software solutions from any instrument manufacturer. You see, total stations have become very smart these days. For example, you can use your Pocket PC, PDA or even your mobile phone with a Bluetooth as your jigger. And how do you achieve this? Very simple, you just need to install a piece of software that will connect with your total station.

Did you know about this? Do you own a PDA, a Pocket PC or a mobile phone that can do this? Do you know if such software is available from YOUR instrument vendor? Do you know where and how to get one?

Well that’s the catch, right there! You can only ever implement a piece of technology if you knew one existed to solve YOUR problem. And in different parts of this wonderful industry, information spreads in different ways. For example, you may still believe that recording sectional terrain data is THE only way to get the most accurate earthworks estimates. Or, you may still do this just because you were told to do so by a “trusted” adviser…

As a result, this software that MUST sit on your latest jigger was ported from the code that was written 20 years ago and now nests nastily over 200Mb of that memory reserved for programs on your instrument. That leaves it about 56Mb to install all the OTHER software that supports the latest and the greatest surveying methods that have emerged in the meantime.

Surveying instruments were never designed to host a very long list of software tools or surveying jobs (and thank God for that! says a support engineer).  There is a long list of extremely useful software tools developed by instrument vendors to optimize the use of their gear and make their products easy to implement and achieve the maximum productivity in no time. AND there are tools developed to run on the instrument to optimize its use with the most popular Surveying and Design software on the market such as Civil 3D. All one needs to do is ASK their vendor if those tools are available and to INCLUDE them with the software tools deployed onboard their total station.

The truth is, new total stations are delivered “blank” to your local reseller. They are then made to serve the local user by going through the workshop first, then to the Support Engineer’s desk to install the suite of software commonly used in that region. And that’s where this process breaks in many parts of the world. (Yes! Go on, blame the Support Engineer!) In most cases, you can’t do this software installation in your office - it has to be done by the instrument vendor. In many parts of the world LDT/Civil 3D have arrived just recently and the incumbent Surveying software tools were used for decades before that. And total stations from Leica, Topcon, Wild, Zeiss etc. for even longer than that. So, the software support engineers have the well defined and long time tested and proven set of software tools optimized for the common use that they install on your jigger and it fits within the constraints of the available memory. If we were to include a new software tool to talk specifically to Civil 3D then in many cases some other tools would have to be dropped  from the jigger to make space (What? Not the cross sections pickup!).  Now, do you think Support Engineers will make the decision to remove a part of the defined set of tools just to include a new one? And which component should they remove? Maybe there need to be more than one tool taken away to add the new one… Is it at all possible to do this since the set of tools may be wrapped in an install package?

There are number of reasons why many of the latest software tools that COULD be on your instrument don’t ever make it there.

Here is a list of some common tools that are often “best kept secrets”:

1. Translators to Fieldbook file (FBK)
2. Components enabling support for LandXML format
3. Tools enabling support for GENIO format
4. Components enabling direct display of field observations in an active AutoCAD drawing.

And there are more, but just to keep it SaS (Short and Sweet) we’ll leave it at this.

Here are some links to further explore this topic:

http://www.leica-geosystems.com/corporate/en/support/lgs_page_catalog.htm?cid=239

http://www.leica-geosystems.com/corporate/en/support/lgs_page_catalog.htm?cid=5111

http://www.trimble.com/link_ts.asp?Nav=Collection-27103

http://www.trimble.com/link.shtml

Have fun!

Rad Lazic

We frequently hear comments, sometimes even demands from LDT users to bring to Civil 3D a few of those functions and utilities we used every so often in LDT. Those cute little functions that are so close to heart because they used to span across steps in the process and even allowed us to complete otherwise complex tasks with oh, so little effort.

We all know how those small utilities can play a big role when we have to move from one stage of the design process to the next one or when we have to do something out of the ordinary and quickly. Just ask any of the “Captains of the Odd Jobs” out there…

AutoCAD Civil 3D 2008 gives a whole new life to many of them in this release. For example, we could shoot straight for the new pull-down menu Lines/Curves. If you take a quick look at what this set of tools offers it doesn’t seem all that important: a long list of good old ways to draw lines and arcs. Few of those can be done by using standard AutoCAD and some transparent commands for Bearing, Azimuth, Point selection etc.

However, those go a long way with helping the users of LDT transition to Civil 3D by providing the full set of familiar tools in the new environment. This is a very LDT user friendly feature in AutoCAD Civil 3D 2008. And we could stop here – no need to explain in any more detail how those good old LDT functions work.

Well that’s all fine except for a couple of the classics from that menu that have been given a hugely new lease on life. I’m not talking about just porting a feature from an old version to the new one. This is a total rewrite of the old functionality specification in the new, graphically enriched environment with greatly improved usability, added functionality, friendlier user interface and what’s most important – requiring minimal or virtually no training to transition to. Because we all know how quick and easy it is to get used to new things that make the life easier…

Have you ever used “Best Fit Line” or “Best Fit Curve” in LDT?

Let’s refresh: You have a set of points recorded along what you know is (or looks like) a line and you need to establish a common line that equally respects all selected points. With a little help from Higher Mathematics that teaches Linear Regression we can actually calculate the bearing that respects each and every one of those points equally well. It probably won’t run right through ANY of the points but it will be the best possible approximation of the original course. Well, that cute little tool is now under the Lines/Curves menu. And when I tell you we have those that will best fit a circular arc or a parabolic arc you should begin to see the light of the variety of applications for this little cutie!

Check this out, now I can select a set of points, AutoCAD Entities, AutoCAD Points or even just go poke the screen until the penguins go to sleep…

Then, the fun starts: as I’m selecting point objects on screen my preview arc is growing – just to let me keep my eye on the thing…And it really is an arc, and not a circle this time.

When I hit Enter to break the selection a panorama view appears and now we’re talking features: I see radius value, I can select any of the points to pass through, I have the regression diagram showing “rogue” points and I can press Ctrl and start selecting those points that obviously do not belong to this set and simply remove them. Likewise, I can add more points, send the report about the whole exercise to a text file, undo/redo and of course, clicking on the check button will create an arc extending exactly from the first selected point to the last one – not longer nor shorter than that.

  <Click on this image to view the full size

I don’t know if you would agree, but I have used this one a lot on road reconstruction jobs to establish exiting EOP – curb returns were always a special treat. I even used this to best approximate profiles, you simply turn EG to a polyline or a set of line segments, best fit a line and then offset up as required…

Now, I don’t attempt to doubt the eagle’s eye of any designer or a surveyor of many years but this is a great enabling function to produce quality results for the rest of us! 

I could not stress more how those “Best Fit ..” functions illustrate THE BEST practice for bringing LDT functionality across to Civil 3D with the all fresh Spring breeze in them! Now, who wouldn’t prefer using these new-gen tools over those driven by pressing a numeric key to select an option!

Fantastic job Autodesk!

ROCK ON!