Eric D. Colburn, PLS

Survey Database Point Groups-AutoCAD Civil 3D 2011 Professional Land Surveyor Video

In this installment of my Professional Land Surveyor Video series, AutoCAD Civil 3D 2011 for Land Surveyors: Survey Database Point Groups, I will show you how to:

1. Create Survey Database Point Groups.
2. Select Survey Database Points to populate your Survey Database Point Groups.
3. Use Survey Database Point Groups to filter points you insert into and remove from your AutoCAD Civil 3D drawings.

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Professional Land Surveyor News

Professional Land Surveyor News: AutoCAD Civil 3D 2011 Survey and API Hotfix

Autodesk has announced an update / hotfix for it’s AutoCAD Civil 3D 2011 product line. According to Autodesk, this update / hotfix address the following:

In a continued effort to improve, we are releasing this hotfix for AutoCAD Civil 3D 2011 that addresses a number of survey, and some addition non-survey related issues.

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Professional Land Surveyor News

Professional Land Surveyor News: Pöyry Awarded EUR 2.1 million Surveying Project for Pumped Storage Hydropower Plant in Switzerland

Pöyry, a global consulting and engineering company dedicated to balanced sustainability, has been awarded the owner’s surveying contract for the new Linth-Limmern pumped storage hydropower plant by Axpo, Switzerland. With services comprising all geodetic surveying tasks during the construction period lasting until 2015, the value of Pöyry’s assignment is about EUR 2.1 million.

About Pöyry PLC

Pöyry, in addition to being a global consulting and engineering company dedicated to balanced sustainability, as mentioned above, also offers their clients:

• Integrated management consulting.
• Total solutions for complex projects and efficient.
• Best-in-class design and supervision.

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Here is a nice video showing how to perform a survey resection in Carlson SurvCE. This video, prepared by Carlson Desktop Solutions, walks you through the process of performing a survey resection and the options available to you. What’s nice about doing a survey resection using Carlson SurvCE software is that you can use multiple points to enhance your precision and accuracy of the resected point.

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DUBUQUE, Iowa, April 20, 2010 – Eagle Point Software Corporation today announced it will offer compatible solutions to Autodesk’s AutoCAD Civil 3D 2011 software for the building design, infrastructure, and construction industries.

“We are excited to be able to quickly support the AutoCAD Civil 3D 2011 release in our portfolio of add-on products that include Pinnacle Series, Data Reduction, and Surveyors’ Companion,” explains Steve Biver, Civil Product Line Manager at Eagle Point. “These products take advantage of the new features of AutoCAD Civil 3D 2011, such as 64-bit support. Our add-on products help ensure successful implementations and better use of Autodesk’s software, while giving our clients a competitive advantage.”

The Eagle Point Pinnacle Series^® add-on technology dramatically improves an organization’s ability to implement AutoCAD Civil 3D and adopt new Building Information Modeling (BIM) workflows. Using links to execute the right commands, the surveying, grading, roadway design, pipe layout, and plan set preparation workflows guide users to complete work faster while consistently following the organization’s standards and best practices.

Data Reduction^™ utilizes direct links with several supported data collectors and data collector formats to download raw instrument and coordinate data. Whether the user is downloading directly from a collector or importing a file from a PC, Data Reduction places AutoCAD Civil 3D COGO points and automated linework into the drawing.

A set of tools that streamline the survey workflow, Surveyors’ Companion^™ leverages proven surveying technology to enable organizations to comfortably and productively move to AutoCAD Civil 3D software. Surveyors’ Companion interacts with native point, parcel, surface, alignment, and profile data.

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Professional Land Surveyor News

March 9, 2010

Applanix Introduces Shoreline Mapping Solution

LONDON, – OCEANOLOGY INTERNATIONAL 2010 – Applanix introduced today the latest LANDMark™ Marine mobile mapping solution. LANDMark Marine enables the creation of seamless models of near shore environments by providing a highly accurate georeferenced point cloud which integrates with equivalent multibeam sonar data.

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SYCODE Releases ESRI Shape File Import Plug-ins for AutoCAD, Bricscad, IntelliCAD and Rhinoceros

Panaji, GOA – 28th October, 2009 – SYCODE has released ESRI Shape file import plug-ins for AutoCAD, Bricscad, IntelliCAD and Rhinoceros. The plug-ins will allow these CAD systems to read two dimensional geometric data from ESRI shape files.  

“Recently we noticed an increase in requests for ESRI shape file support from existing and prospective customers,” explains Deelip Menezes, Founder and CEO of SYCODE. “These four ESRI import plug-ins are a direct result of those requests. In fact, a majority of our 200+ products are born this way. At SYCODE, we are happy to develop and offer CAD data exchange solutions to our customers that assist in the smooth flow of data in their internal workflows”.

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AutoCAD Civil 3D

In the Beginning

This is the beginning of a series of posts about setting up and using AutoCAD Civil 3D in your land surveying work. I know from the many conversations I’ve had with other professional land surveyors and mapping professionals that there is some confusion, and certainly a lot of frustration, with setting up and using AutoCAD Civil 3D.

Setting up and learning to use AutoCAD Civil 3D can be a daunting task, but it is well worth it once you’ve configured it to your company standards and learn to use, at the very least, some of the basics. I speak from experience and I know full well that you have a lot (A LOT) of setup ahead of you. I also went through this rocky experience, so I hope to make this a less painful experience for you.

Learning to use AutoCAD Civil 3D has not been as simple or as trouble free as I would have liked. However, I think it is unfair to lump all of the blame on AutoCAD Civil 3D. In all honesty, part of the problem with setting up and using AutoCAD Civil 3D is that it does require a lot of initial setup which is dependent upon your professional land surveying practice having standards in place.

A Brave New World

So,  you can look at this initial setup of AutoCAD Civil 3D as a negative or you can take a positive approach and use the setup of standards as a holistic overhaul of your surveying standards and procedures. And, this is where I shall start.

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