Working with Surfaces: Trimble Business Center
"Software tools" is an interesting term. A tool allows you to perform work. Using the wrong tool or trying to put too many in your bag causes problems. The software tool, Trimble Business Center, utilizes commands for creating, editing and checking surfaces to help us...
Enhanced Data: Civil Sites
A previous article dealt with chasing perfection on civil sites. I would now like to further explain some items that we touched on and others that we use to make a job go smoother. A "ton of information supplied" approach to creating data for a site takes too much...
3D Data: More than Machine Control
For many years, our business has been centered on the production of 3D data for machine control. This is the low hanging fruit of a civil site. High dollar paving, building pads, and retentions are easier to do and higher quality with machine control. Fast forward to...
Chasing Perfection on Civil Sites
We need to strike a balance between a picture perfect model on the screen and a well-priced practical job that performs well. Nobody wants us or their model builder to make some infinitely detailed model that would be so dense it would slow down machines. Not to...
Using optical character recognition for data prep
We have all been there. We come across a lot of numbers that need to be entered during a project. It could be spot elevations, alignment information or control. Life would get easier if we could just get the numbers from the page into our program! In this post, I will...
It’s All About the Data – A Visit to Take-Off Professionals
As the construction industry becomes more dependent on technology, early innovators Marco Cecala and Tom Pastuszak from TOPS are setting the stage for the future. Read more from The American Surveyor's latest profile article, "It's All About the Data: A Visit to...
How to Utilize the Point Offset Feature in Trimble Business Center
TOPS engineer Mike Tartaglia walks you through the simple and easy task of taking detailed information from a PDF and placing it to create a working model using the Point Offset feature in Trimble Business Center (TBC). The TBC platform is field-to-finish survey CAD...
Trends in LIDAR and Photogrammetry Technology
With the New Year well underway, I wanted to take a look and review the advances and advantages of current imaging technology as it relates to creating surfaces from LIDAR and Photogrammetry. It appears that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Several...
US Survey Feet and International Feet; everything you need to know
If you have never had the misfortune to deal with the difference between US and International feet, consider yourself lucky. When the issue presents itself, it can make things difficult to understand. No worries, the curtain will now be pulled back and the mystery...
Issues with US Survey and International Feet
I wrote an article a while back about the difference between US Survey and International Feet. You can read it here. I have received many questions regarding what can happen to a job and how to tell what units you are in. To address this, I will first go through the...