Eric D. Colburn, PLS

Eagle Point Surveyors' Companion For Civil 3D Overview Professional Land Surveyor Video

Here’s a quick video overview of the features, functions, and command set for Eagle Point Surveyors’ Companion For Civil 3D.

At this point I don’t know too much about Eagle Point Surveyors’ Companion For Civil 3D, so this video is sort of an unpacking and peek into this software package.

Already, I’ve quickly used the List Points and Unused Points reports, which are very handy. This, and everything else I’ve seen, makes me very excited to put Eagle Point Surveyors’ Companion For Civil 3D into action.

Watch the video after the jump Read the rest of this entry →

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.

Watch the video after the jump Read the rest of this entry →

Here’s a cool video of the Vienna City Hall (Rathaus) based on LIDAR data, Orthophoto, Terrestial images and Cadastral map. Nice music, too! Read the rest of this entry →

Here’s a neat video I came across showing Microsoft Street Slide browsing of street-level imagery.

The Microsoft Research YouTube Channel has this to say about this video:

“Street Slide is a novel browsing interface for street-level imagery that combines the best aspects of the immersive nature of “bubbles” with the overview provided by multiperspective strip panoramas, figures to attract significant interest, in large part because of the ingenious way in which Microsoft Researchers tackle problems with current street-side imagery on the web.”

After the Jump, Watch the Video and Read the rest of this entry →

In this installment of my Professional Land Surveyor Video series, AutoCAD Civil 3D 2011 for Land Surveyors: Create a Surface From a Point Group, I will show you how to:

1. Create a Point Group specifically for project surface points.
2. Create a Surface.
3. Use the Point Group to define the Surface.

Watch the video after the jump Read the rest of this entry →

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.

Read the rest of this entry →

Professional Land Surveyor News

Professional Land Surveyor News-PPI Adds New Topcon Precision Mobile 3D Mapping and Survey System.

Here’s some recent news about one company, the PPI Group, that is using cutting edge surveying and mapping solutions for infrastructure and mapping projects. To do this they are using Topcon’s vehicle-mounted, mobile 3D precision mobile mapping and survey system, the Topcon IP-S2.

Since 1927, the PPI Group has served the Architecture, Engineering, Construction and GIS industries of the Pacific Northwest. They offer complete field to finish solutions, technology leadership to solve business challenges, and more than 80 years of hands-on experience. The PPI Group is one of the largest survey and construction supply companies on the West Coast and an authorized dealer of Topcon equipment and Autodesk software solutions.

Read the rest of this entry →

Over the weekend I listened to a few podcast; some funny, some news oriented and a few with business and marketing topics. Marketing is often misunderstood, or overlooked altogether, by many professional land surveyors, engineers and designers. So, when I find something to help you understand a subject, like marketing in this case, I’ll share that with you to help you improve your land surveying business.

In one podcast I listened to, the host interviewed Sally Hogshead, who is a speaker, author and brand innovation consultant. She has also been profiled by The New York Times, NBC, CBS and MSNBC. It was interesting and informative listening to her being interviewed in this podcast about her latest book entitled, Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation(eCampus affiliate link). I obviously have not had a chance to get her book and read it yet, but I sure look forward to doing so.

From what she said, and in looking at her website, this book discusses why certain people are captivating, why we lean towards certain brands, and not others, and how to convince people to change their behaviors.

Quoting from her website:

“Fascination is the most powerful way to influence decision-making. It’s more persuasive than marketing, advertising, or any other form of communication. And it all starts with seven universal triggers of fascination: power, lust, mystique, alarm, prestige, vice, and trust.”

This new way of thinking about our hardwired human behaviors and applying our understanding of this phenomenon to branding and marketing, seems to make a lot of sense and is something you could use to better understand your (you and your company) marketing strategy.

Read the rest of this entry →

RealtorsTV: National Association of Realtors-Existing Home Sales Down But Prices Rise

Professional Land Surveyor News

Yesterday, January 18, 2009, Reuters India reported from Beijing, China that over the past weekend China launched the third BeiDou (Big Dipper) or Compass satellite in an effort to build its own global satellite positioning (GPS) system. This latest satellite is part of  a proposed constellation of 35 Chinese GPS satellites to be in orbit by the year 2020.

China is competing in space with the United States and Russia, and in addition to these BeiDou or COMPASS satellites also has plans to land on the Moon in 2012. While this instills a great deal of national pride within China, and is increasing the prominence of China in the space arena, this initiative and the overall China space program has alarmed some western counterparts. Within the region, rival India, in response to China’s space ambitions, is now working to increase India’s space program.

As reported, the China BeiDou or COMPASS GPS network will provide the following services:

• Read the rest of this entry →