Carlson Surveyor+ GPS

[ReMark]

We typically try to use in-house surveying capability for small jobs rather than hire a surveyor. When a large survey is needed, for example when we lease nearby land, the company still calls in the surveyor who did the lousy job on the last A-2 survey because he and the president of the company are boyhood friends. Nothing i can do about that except to go over any resultant maps with a fine tooth comb.

 

I am well aware that to meld the GPS data with our existing site plan I'll need some control points. I may set a handful arbitrarily across the site and survey them in using our transit and repeat the procedure with the GPS.

 

I realize using/learning GPS is not just simply pushing a button and that's why I inquired about training. And I'm not talking a quick 10 minute run through. I figure between 1 to 2 hours worth of training. I may even record the session with my voice activated digital recorder as well as take hand written notes just so I don't forget anything. Not much more I can do other than that. Sound like a plan?

[SLW210]

We typically try to use in-house surveying capability for small jobs rather than hire a surveyor. When a large survey is needed, for example when we lease nearby land, the company still calls in the surveyor who did the lousy job on the last A-2 survey because he and the president of the company are boyhood friends. Nothing i can do about that except to go over any resultant maps with a fine tooth comb.

 

I am well aware that to meld the GPS data with our existing site plan I'll need some control points. I may set a handful arbitrarily across the site and survey them in using our transit and repeat the procedure with the GPS.

 

I realize using/learning GPS is not just simply pushing a button and that's why I inquired about training. And I'm not talking a quick 10 minute run through. I figure between 1 to 2 hours worth of training. I may even record the session with my voice activated digital recorder as well as take hand written notes just so I don't forget anything. Not much more I can do other than that. Sound like a plan?

 

Sounds like a plan.

 

I would believe an hour or two should be enough to learn the equipment operation.

[Tyke]

We typically try to use in-house surveying capability for small jobs rather than hire a surveyor. When a large survey is needed, for example when we lease nearby land, the company still calls in the surveyor who did the lousy job on the last A-2 survey because he and the president of the company are boyhood friends. Nothing i can do about that except to go over any resultant maps with a fine tooth comb.

 

I am well aware that to meld the GPS data with our existing site plan I'll need some control points. I may set a handful arbitrarily across the site and survey them in using our transit and repeat the procedure with the GPS.

 

I realize using/learning GPS is not just simply pushing a button and that's why I inquired about training. And I'm not talking a quick 10 minute run through. I figure between 1 to 2 hours worth of training. I may even record the session with my voice activated digital recorder as well as take hand written notes just so I don't forget anything. Not much more I can do other than that. Sound like a plan?

 

Would it be possible to record some parts on video so you can see what buttons were pressed and exactly how and where the settings were made. My experience with my own guys is that there is always something they don't quite remember, but luckily I usually have two or three of then on any company specific training, so usually at least one of them remembers how that part went. Let your voice activated digital recorder run parallel to the video.

[ReMark]

Video? Ah.............no. But thanks for the suggestion.

[sinc]

Sound like a plan?

 

It sounds like one approach. It really comes down to you, and how much general Surveying knowledge you have. If you don't know what you're doing, then you can run into all kinds of problems when you start combining GPS and Total Station observations, and you're working in a grid system like State Plane or UTM.

 

Assuming you know how to survey in State Plane using your Total Station, you'll likely be OK. In fact, given the precision you need, you could possibly even mess things up totally, yet still do something that's accurate enough for your purposes.

 

I wouldn't exactly recommend it, though. I've seen experienced Surveyors mess stuff like this up. And that's typically after a lot more than just an hour or two of training. By doing it yourself, you're pulling all liability onto yourself. If you were in Colorado, I'd tell you to give us a call... We'd not only be able to get it done quickly, but also give you a high degree of confidence that there were no errors.

[ReMark]

Total station? Nowhere did I say I had access to or knowledge of the use of a total station. I got out of surveying and into drafting just as total stations were becoming widely used.

 

How much general surveying knowledge do I have? I think I have enough to understand what's happening and what I'd like to do. Do I need to get specific about my background?

 

I'm comfortable with taking on the responsibility. If I wasn't I never would have suggested renting a GPS unit. I would have laid out a baseline around the plant and used stadia to locate all the well points. If I wanted better precision I would use my steel surveyor's tape and measure the distances and just shoot the angles. I do not need the elevation but as long as I'm out there I might pick that up as well.

[sinc]

Sorry, my fault... I completely missed the part where you said all you had was a transit and you were thinking of using stadia.

 

If you only care about that level of accuracy, you might be fine. And since it looks like you're in Connecticut, I presume you are pretty close to sea level, so you probably don't have much difference between State Plane and Ground.

 

Although if you also have in-house Surveyors, why aren't they doing it?

[ReMark]

I think you missed a couple of my posts.

 

I am all the in-house surveying capability the company has. For anything more they hire out.

 

My past experience, for a municipal engineering department, had me working as a transitman in a three man crew. I've done a couple of A-2 surveys but most of the work we were involved with had to do with laying out underground utilities, sidewalks, and roads. For my company the work has been less exacting and certainly not as frequent.

[dent]

or Civil 3D, that's where the surveyors are

 

 

Not really. Some people cringe at the price tag of C3D, considering that most surveyors will use only about 30% of that $6500 package. The actual working differance between LDD and C3D is quite minimal, it just is a little more difficult to set up and use. They are paying for scads of features they will never use. MANY surveyors are switching to Carlson Survey with embedded AutoCad because it only costs $2500 a seat and there is nothing a surveyor can do, in his field, in C3D that he cannot do in Carlson. Plus there are some things they can do in Carlson that they cannot do in AutoCad. Simple economics is why we just transitioned 7 seats of AutoCad over to Carlson Survey. Data is collected using Carlson Field on Panasonic Toughbooks and the data flow is seamless. Production is up over 35% in the first few months of operation. Drafting time is about 1/3 of what it used to be. Being able to use the same Field To Finish set-up in the field as in the office and letting the codes draw all of the linework in the field is a major plus. AND being able to use the same field codes for in-house work and Corps of Engineer work, yet have everything drawn on the correct layers in both systems has improved things all the way around. I can import the .crd file and have the linework change between setups by simply using the correct .DWT file. I was not able to do that in prior versions of AutoCad. I'm real happy with the software and I saved my company a butt load of cash. The Boss is happy.

[Tyke]

Not really. Some people cringe at the price tag of C3D, considering that most surveyors will use only about 30% of that $6500 package. The actual working differance between LDD and C3D is quite minimal, it just is a little more difficult to set up and use. They are paying for scads of features they will never use. MANY surveyors are switching to Carlson Survey with embedded AutoCad because it only costs $2500 a seat and there is nothing a surveyor can do, in his field, in C3D that he cannot do in Carlson. Plus there are some things they can do in Carlson that they cannot do in AutoCad. Simple economics is why we just transitioned 7 seats of AutoCad over to Carlson Survey. Data is collected using Carlson Field on Panasonic Toughbooks and the data flow is seamless. Production is up over 35% in the first few months of operation. Drafting time is about 1/3 of what it used to be. Being able to use the same Field To Finish set-up in the field as in the office and letting the codes draw all of the linework in the field is a major plus. AND being able to use the same field codes for in-house work and Corps of Engineer work, yet have everything drawn on the correct layers in both systems has improved things all the way around. I can import the .crd file and have the linework change between setups by simply using the correct .DWT file. I was not able to do that in prior versions of AutoCad. I'm real happy with the software and I saved my company a butt load of cash. The Boss is happy.

 

You are in some ways correct dent. As far as I am aware Carlson Survey is only available in the English language, certainly not German. So it is of no use to my company, where I am the only person who can speak or understand English.We do have other survey and CAD software, not just C3D. But we have and use the various software systems because our clients demand it and without the software that they specify we would not get the contracts. I find the cost of C3D to exorbitant too, but I must have it. On the other hand the Subscription costs are very reasonable for what you get, the annual software maintenance contracts (as how the Germans describe the Subscription for their software) is more than four times as expensive as with Autodesk. We also do not use anything like the majority of the functionality of C3D.

 

Getting the data from the data collector into AutoCAD with automatic placement of points, lines, symbols, object data, attributes etc all on their respective layers has never been a problem with AutoCAD, I was doing it in the early nineties!

Is it possible to write your own customization for Carlson Survey? LISP I think, but Visual Lisp or a .NET API I think not.

 

We are also about to start using the Trimble Business Center to complement our Trimble instruments. That too can output to AutoCAD and MicroStation formats.

 

What is the deciding factor is what is it exactly that you do? What suits one company/department is not necessarily the solution for another company/department. One should not see his own solution as the only one and one should always be open minded, with a bit of understanding of the needs of others.

 

I do some consultancy work for a survey company in the UK and they do not need AutoCAD Civil 3D. They use just vanilla AutoCAD together with software that I have developed, together with Leica Total Stations and GNSS, but in an effort to reduce costs we are now considering Bricscad as an alternative to AutoCAD.

 

Don't be too blinkered in your outlook and when you read a post with a winking smilie after it consider that it should not be always taken too literally.

 

I wish you luck with Carlson Survey and hope that the Boss gave you a big bonus for saving him so much cash.

[sinc]

The actual working differance between LDD and C3D is quite minimal, it just is a little more difficult to set up and use.

 

That's not true at all. C3D is quite different. A lot of your criticisms of it are invalid. If you were trying to use it like LDD, that might explain why you had so much trouble with it.

 

Plus, as we've gotten more skilled with C3D, we find that we actually use almost the entire program. And we, too, have seen huge gains in productivity compared to LDD, not only with drafting times, but with construction calcs, and all our office tasks in general. Whereas we used to need 1 LDD tech per field crew, we now find that 1 C3D tech can keep up with 2 or 3 field crews quite handily. That's an increase in production of 100-200%. And at the same time, we're doing better work, with more consistency, and to a higher degree of quality.

 

True, Carlson can do a lot, and has features that are missing from C3D. In particular, Carlson is making a lot more progress in the realm of Survey/GIS integration, which is an area that has apparently still not even hit Autodesk's radar yet. But C3D also has a lot of features that are missing from Carlson, which give us a lot more control over the appearance of what we create, while still maintaining standards. Net result is we turn out a very high quality product, with a high degree of consistency, and we do it very quickly. And of course, C3D is far more expandable. We, too, would be frustrated if we had to use just plain C3D for Surveying, but we don't. The right add-on package eliminates much of the Surveyor's frustrations with C3D, and turns it into one monster Surveying tool. C3D has that terrible learning curve, but once you get through it, it actually gets difficult to use Carlson.

 

But we've had this discussion before.

Edited August 21, 2011 by sinc

[ReMark]

An update.

 

Finally rented the Carlson Surveyor+ GPS unit for four days. I went through two hours of training which covered how to connect all the pieces, how the system worked, creating a new job, and storing points. We also talked about reflective interference and satellite positioning as well as connecting to the local server via the cell phone antenna.

 

I can't tell you how many shots I took but it was a few hundred. The number might have been lower but for the fact that I had to go back to some locations more than once to try and obtain a suitable reading. Except for the two main control points which were occupied for 180 seconds all other points were occupied for 30 seconds. We obtained a northing and easting coordinate based on the Connecticut State Plane System as well as elevations for all points. On a scale of 1 to 10 I'd rate the overall experience as a 7. Ease of use was good. Had some problems on the third day with cell phone reception causing us to lose time when a signal was lost and had to be reacquired several times throughout the day. Some of the locations were inaccessible by satellite yet I felt we were in an open enough area and it should have been no problem. We got two sets of two batteries (two batteries needed to run the GPS unit at a time). One set would not hold more than a 50% charge while the other could not be charged to more than 25% of capacity. This caused a bit of a hassle on day one when we used the system almost continuously for 8 hours straight.

 

Would I rent the unit again? Yes, but I would be very careful about what I was going to survey with it since this particular GPS system seems more suitable for a completely open site and not one like ours with process and R&D buildings and trees adjacent to the security fence that rings the site.

 

I'm returning the unit today and will be retrieving our two point files. It will be interesting to see how I get those into our AutoCAD drawing file of the site plan.

Edited September 22, 2011 by ReMark