Enhanced Data: Highways
There is nothing more difficult, or rewarding, than seeing a highway job perform well from dirt work to paving. It takes years of experience to fully understand the process. My advice is to think differently about the approach. In upcoming blog posts, I will go over...
The Essential Guide to Quantity Takeoff in Construction
As a professional involved in architecture, engineering and construction (AEC), you’re likely familiar with quantity takeoffs. The term has been around a long time in the building industry, and it reflects an important part of the planning process. Quantity takeoff...
The Mechanics of GPS Surveying: Methods and Applications
Surveying has changed substantially over the years — what used to take months of observation, measurement and geometrical calculations now takes a few hours or days thanks to the introduction of GPS technology. In fact, the surveying industry was one of the first to...
Carlson Software and Working with Surfaces
Carlson Software is a very adaptable tool. It can run standalone by using the IntelliCAD engine or as an add-on to AutoCAD and Civil 3D. At TOPS, we all run Carlson on top of Civil 3D. In my opinion, this provides a robust, versatile work platform. In this blog post,...
Enhanced Data: Subdivisions
Beyond the surface in a subdivision, there are things you can do to make your job easier. I will cover the more common tools we use to expedite planning in subdivision grading and paving jobs. I will also breakdown the improvements we’ve made beyond the simple site...
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...