Points list

[John Thompson]

Nate,

I wish now we would have taken up a collection and bought you a T-LS months ago when you first mentioned on Beerleg that you wanted one. I like your ideas and your energy in improving this thing. If I had known how much of a kid in the candy store you were going to be, I would have bought you one myself.

 

[John Thompson]

Just updated JField. I'm liking the overtype mode on the keyboard and the point descriptions in the points list.

Thank you for the quick updates! Keeps getting better.

It would be sweet if I could scroll the left pane of the points list with the swipe of the stylus like I can the right (blue) pane with the point details.

 

[Shawn Billings]

Nate, I agree with John. Feel free to take your time to absorb the new features, which in your case, most of everything is new. But don't stop contributing. I thought it was pretty cool that you and I had just talked about descriptions in the point list last Sunday and here it is in the software. It's somewhat of a coincidence in this case because it had been on the list for a while, but it looks like it'll do pretty much what you want.

(I was short earlier because I was checking in from time to time by cell phone - hard to type much that way while in the field).

 

[Nate The Surveyor]

csnt type right now, baby has my earr later!

 

[Nate The Surveyor]

The Blue Screen, on the right, (See last pic, of Post # 44 above) could display 2 lines of description. It is my understanding that this thing can handle some humongus quantity of Point Desc. Maybe 128 or 256 characters. We have all returned to a particular coordinate, and added notes to that point. Such as "Local farmer Joe with tobacco juice on his bib overalls, says that this was set by County Surveyor, in 1969, he thinks it was Claude Jones, but it could have been Doug Robbins... and that he set the steel fencepost beside the stone, at that time."
When somebody said "Electronic Field Book, I immediately thought modified word processor, in the field, with all coords tagged by name, or point number. So that we could open the "SmithFarm" job, and then type in RR tie, and all the RR ties come up, and then we pick the one we want, and now we can ADD to the notes, and really are more efficient than with paper notes. Well, that got sidetracked, when the data collector got more emphasis on the Tech side of surveying, and less on the documentation of field points. (we got restricted to 16 characters).
Well, Mr Javad has RE-opened the possibility of getting a MORE efficient method of managing field information. I want to stress right here, that I am a LAND SURVEYOR. NOT an engineer. And, that my wish and wants could include lots of work and features, that a surveyor would want, but that an engineer would find cumberson, or in his way.
I also wish CARLSON desktop software would allow you to HOVER over any given point, and your second screen shows the whole page of notes associated with that point. But, that's getting beyond the scope. We are going to want/need a method of listening to audio files, in the office, without the LS. So that we can quickly and easily say dictate to the LS: Attach to RR tie. and it looks up all the RR ties. Then, we pick one. Then, we can ADD audio notes. YUP! Maybe not in the REAL near future, but eventually..... I can see us also giving verbal commands to the LS. I like it. Yes I do. Eventually.... It might even have to be in the "Generation 2 LS" Which should also have a larger screen, and enlarged text, for senior citizens..... Or maybe real fast wifi link, and doing it on a tablet..... O yeah!

I suffer from brain wandering. But I have learned to live with it.

Nate

 

[Adam]

I've been thinking about this, since this morning's conference call.

I believe that Codes would be the best way for Adam to simulate Carlson. My thought is this. Build a code in J-Field for each Carlson field to finish action code.

Here I've made a Code, called ea. I've set up two attributes for this code: Line Number and Action. Line Number will be attached to the Code to produce the Carlson field-to-finish action code ea1 (in this example). During collection, you can change this attribute to 2, 3, 4, etc. which will produce ea2, ea3, ea4. This will require a slight change to our exporting which I'll describe in more detail in a moment. The action will also export. In this example I've set up action code "PC" which will begin a curve in Carlson field-to-finish. This Action could be any action you might desire (PT, CLO, JPN, JOG, etc.) Once you enter the action item in the attribute, the attribute library stores this item until you delete it from the library. So you don't have to type any of them more than once. Once you type it in, you can just recall it from the attribute selection screen. This should prove to be very fast. Pick the code from your code list, pick the line number from the Line Number attribute list, pick an action from the Action attribute list. If you don't want an Action, select <EMPTY> from the Action attribute list.

View attachment 3429


On the Collect Action screen, setup white boxes for Code (see box "ea") and Attributes (see box 1, PC). Also setup white box for description. In this case the description can be used for text entry to further describe the point being collected (if necessary). Notice I have prefaced the Description with a "/". The default nature of this character prevents text to the right from being processed in Field to Finish.

View attachment 3430


At Export, I would have my .txt set up to export as follows:

View attachment 3431

The export will need one addition, a Separator 3. A point exported with the above Code (ea) and Attributes (1, PC) would export like this:
L042,5000.0000000000,5000.0000000000,100.0000000000,ea 1 PC /Desc

This almost produces the desired result, except that we don't want the space between "ea" and "1". We do need the comma delimiter, and we do need the space delimiter, but we need a third delimiter, None, between the Code and Attribute 1, which in my example is the line number, which would produce "ea1". This would result in an export of:

L042,5000.0000000000,5000.0000000000,100.0000000000,ea1 PC /Desc

I still maintain that the J-Field line work using Tags and Codes is more efficient than Carlson's Field to Finish, but I understand the desire to maintain consistency across platforms. It's possible that you could still use J-Field's line work with Tags and Codes and still use this scheme to work with Carlson. Adam, what do you think?

I am entering in some codes and attributes. It would be cool to be able to enter a bunch of attributes then assign them to the particular codes. It looks like the attribute has to be entered in for each code. I will have all my codes and attributes entered today but it may help others in the future if this could be implemented.

 

[Matt Johnson]

This is all going well. I can step back... I would suggest that we should be able to search by desc, to find all the 1" or All the 3/8", but I guess that's already here, with the Filter...

I'm gonna step back, and bless you fellas! Glad it is gonna be great! Thanks!

Nate

A description filter is currently available in Additional Filters:

 

[Matt Johnson]

It would be sweet if I could scroll the left pane of the points list with the swipe of the stylus like I can the right (blue) pane with the point details.

We have being able to use the hardware arrows buttons to advance the pages on the to do list (VSAPP-2168).

 

[Matt Johnson]

We are going to want/need a method of listening to audio files, in the office

You can export the audio files to your PC using the Project Archive File format. In this example all the photos and audio files for this project would be exported into a zip folder:

 

[Adam]

In the procedure I am thinking about, J-Field codes would not be different from description. The code and its attributes would export as the description. The codes would be used to shortcut manual entry by making selections from populated code/attribute libraries instead of manually typing the description.

Okay, I've ran into one little problem. When I import points into the collector that were coded for F2F, (ea2, ea2 eg1, etc), J field asks if it should create new codes for each of them. This results in many codes being created, in fact a code for each and every combination of codes and linework strings, multiple codes, etc. By the way that brings up the question of multiple codes such as nls eg, can I use multiple codes in J field? I need a way to import my points and it split the code into code and attributes maybe reverse of the way we are exporting them. Hopefully I explained this okay. Need help.

 

[Matt Johnson]

When importing points use the Description field rather than the Code field. There isn't a way for a point to have multiple codes.

 

[Nate The Surveyor]

Nate,

I wish now we would have taken up a collection and bought you a T-LS months ago when you first mentioned on Beerleg that you wanted one. I like your ideas and your energy in improving this thing. If I had known how much of a kid in the candy store you were going to be, I would have bought you one myself.

John, I am really pushing myself, to get up to speed with this gear. I'd like to get on the Javad team, and actually make this into a world class (easy) system, that allows a SIMPLE person to use it, BUT as they get used to it, they can dig for the complex stuff. In fact, that is my goal, regardless. I have a small computer, (Sharp pc 1600) with software in it written by a local surveyor. it is the SIMPLEST survey and cogo ever made. In fact, I used to have 2 1 hr sessions with it, and a field book, to train and orient new guys as to what surveying is. We cover ALL the basics in that 2 hrs. It has many limitations. Only 250 points! It has a bad 2 button sequence, that clears the whole job. It was very deep in the software, and impossible to fix, without a complete re write. All of these things are a "Work in Progress". I understand that. I see surveying software eventually becoming voice operated, eventually.
I'd love to say to it INVERSE. And it respond 1st point? I reply PINE KNOT, and it says "4 pine knots found". Select from list or drawing? Drawing, and the nice 10" screen then displays the 4 pine knots. I touch the one I want. IF there are 2 close to each other, and I touch on either of them, then if zooms in, and has the POINT descriptions fully displayed, (at least the 1st line of desc) I pick the one I want.
And, it says NEXT POINT.
And, I say, 1/2" rebar with cap.
It says: there are 42 1/2" rebar with cap. So, I say list them, and they populate the screen, with ONE line of Desc. each. Then, I scroll down, and pick one. As soon as I pick it, it says the number.

Then, it displays Azimuth, Bearing, Northing diff, Easting Diff, Slope Dist, (or vector dist) Elev diff. AND ground distance. If I hit the toggle button, I can view also the Geodetic Bearing and Azimuth, IN ANOTHER COLOR.

I could go on all day. But, I can condense and re arrange all this into a "To Do" list for the programmers. I can argue with and get this all going.

I can do it. If Javad wants.

Nate