Some best practices help

I am surveyor and all i do with C3D is parcels, surfaces, and pipe networks. I am able to produce great products but i am having some trouble and was hoping someone might be able to help.

My biggest problem is with survey databases. What is the best way to keep up with points for a large project? Should I import a different filename everyday that only contains the points from that day? or should I use the same filename every time and just "update" the drawing?

Sometimes when I import the data it will redraw my survey figures from other days. Is there a way to avoid this? How many figure styles should i have? It seems like I need a lot of them.

I have a ton more to ask, but maybe someone can help with this.

Thanks in advance!

We start by making sure all field data is dumped to dated folders in the job. The field surveyor is also supposed to scan in the field notes, and place a PDF of the notes in this folder.

In C3D, we use a variety of methods, depending on the task. For some things, we import points into the drawing, and just use dated Point Groups to track which points came from which day. When using the Survey Database, we use different Survey Networks for each day (although sometimes we'll combine several days work, and import the whole thing in one Survey Network).

We have three Survey Figure Styles.

The first is the default one, with cyan lines and big white circles (markers) on the nodes - in other words, a big ugly style that really jumps out. This style only gets used if the code is not found in the Figure Prefix Library. It indicates that either we're missing a code in our Figure Prefix Library, or the field surveyor made an error. That's the reason for the big white circles - they call attention.

The second is our "standard" style. It is set to ByLayer for most things. So for most things, our Figure Prefix Library assigns this "standard" style, and also places the figure on the correct layer, which makes the figure appear the way we want.

We also have a third style, which flattens the figure to 0 elevation. This started out as a test, to try and get linetypes to show up correctly (e.g. with linetype generation) for fences and utility locates. That attempt failed, but we still have the "flattened" style floating around. To tell you the truth, though, it hasn't really proven to be useful, so we really only need the first two styles. Basically, our "standard" style that we use for everything, and the "bogus" default style that gets assigned when a code is missing from the Figure Prefix Library.

I've seen other people try to do fancier things with Survey Figure Styles, such as create a "Gate" style that automatically pops a symbol on the center of a gate, when the field surveyor shoots both ends of the gate. But we currently don't do anything like that.

Thanks, Sinc. So you create a new survey network (almost) every day. Ok, I will try that next time... that will probably remove my figure lines being redrawn every time I import.

I must be that guy with so many different styles. I currently 8 different styles and was about to add a lot more.

Thanks!