How do you process your survey data?

For small topograpic survey jobs with less than 500 sideshots, I do the following process:

1. download from topcon ts via topcon link
2. export raw file to csv (hor,dist,ver,rr,etc)
3. open the csv in excel and use a preprogrammed spreadsheet to compute coordinates,elevs
4. export coordinate file to csv
5. import in autocad
6. connect the dots.

I am comfortable with this process. Problem is lately, office have to process survey data from several crews with different TS. Each surveyor has his old habits in coding features, station naming, etc. even though there are set standards. One guy would use all caps,another would use all smallcaps,another would use dash (T-1), another would use dots (T.1) etc. Some of these disfferences are also due to Total Station brands.

Office processing is now beginning to feel the glut in data processing. We have to combine all survey data from the different crews and adjust the traverse loop before doing the sideshot processing.

There must be a better way to process huge amounts of data. A typical large topographic survey work has around 50,000-75,000 points.

What is your process?

All of that should happen right in AutoCad if you have a package with a COGO module. If you use numeric codes for data collection you are liberated from variation. Using data collection routines where the user selects rather than keys any characters in is better yet. You can create a file in the COGO module that reads field coding and assigns the appropriate layer as well as connecting the dots. This method can process multiple data collectors in multiple drawings in minutes. But it does take some time to set up.
MLB

Carlson Survey. I use a leicaTCR 1105 which saves to a PCMIA card.   Download the raw file to the carlson projcet directory, process it then using field to finish (F2F) I can (by using either point numbers or descriptor codes) "connect the dots."

What's nice about the carlson F2F is that you can easily edit the descriptor codes and draw your line work in the field, or in the office...

Probaly 80% of my work is just as you described..less than 500 shot topos..

Dtp

All caps for topographic surveys...no caps for any calc points.  Keeps them separated and everyone knows if it was a calc point or a field point.
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