Overwriting Points Importing Fieldbook

[gleep]

Long time lurker on this forum. Infrequent poster. Apologies if this topic has been covered. I couldn't find it.

We're moving [slowly, painfully] from LDD to Civil 2012. When importing a survey fieldbook in LDD, my method has always been to "clean up" the fieldbook during the import. Rather than search through the fieldbook text file manually, I'll let the import process find the duplicate, overwritten points, or errant linecodes, and then exclamate them or change them in the fieldbook and, if necessary, reimport the fieldbook. Figures and breaklines use the initial coordinate, for instance, so sometimes a reimport is (was) necessary.

So our survey crews "overwrite" points in the field for bad rod heights, angles, descriptions, etc... During the LDD import process that point number is flagged and I am given the option to overwrite/average/etc.... In Civil 3D I seem to be stuck with an average of the two observations, and I'm not even alerted about which point numbers come from these "multiple observations." So I've no idea without sifting through the often substantial list of point numbers which points have duplicate data connected to them.

Can someone perhaps point me in the right direction? I've combed through the import options and I just don't see what I'm looking for, which, in a phrase, is to be alerted when there are duplicate numbers in the fieldbook.

Thanks in advance.

[SurveyorLee]

One way may be to create a lease squares input file.  The points with multiple shots on them should show as traverse stations.  Then all you have to do is find those point numbers.

To get around this issue, our field guys don't make edits. They note them in the field book and we change them in the office.  We can edit rod hts and descriptions.  If it's and anlge or distance, they shoot the point over and make a note for the orginal point number to be deleted.  This keeps the files cleaner and we have an accurate log of why we ddid not use a specific point and the field notes verify which is correct.

Hope this helps.

Surveyor Lee 

[gleep]

Thanks for your input.

I do all my control adjustments in a least squares program and then import my adjusted control before running any fieldbooks. Control traverse, benchmarks, targets, etc... none of these come into "fieldbook" play. 

Then we run coded lines in the field so I don't want to throw all that out by importing ALL my sideshots as an adjusted point file and simply hunting for duplicate points. So but then yes, we could go back to the old days of simply jotting errors down in a fieldbook and manually editing the field data, but it's so much quicker to simply overwrite the error in the field, have the import process catch the duplicate, and then tell CAD to ignore the first observation. On a 6,000 point topo I'd rather the process be as automated as possible. Our rule is if there is a duplicate point, the first one is bunk. It was overwritten for a reason.

I mean, if I attempt to insert a point that is already in the drawing I get a warning pop up. So I'm thinking there's a setting somewhere in here I'm missing. Probably a simple check box. But for the life of me I can't find it.

[gleep · Accepted solution]

AHA! Found it.

I'll post the solution for anyone chasing down this same problem.  (There's a good chance we're a bassackwards company and should be doing things differently... but ah t'well. Time honored traditions and all.)

In the SURVEY DATABASE SETTINGS, I do NOT ignore tolerance errors, then I set my Error Tolerance thresholds to zero. I then selected them all. (I would ALWAYS rather be alerted before blindly accepting multiple observations.) Now when I import my fieldbooks, I am alerted to EVERY duplicate point. I can then edit the observation, fieldbook, etc...

Probably seems pretty basic but somehow this eluded me for many hours.

[gdbell]

I'm having the same problem, duplicate points when importing into Civil 3D 2013.  Is there a way find out what the duplicate point number is? Got a fieldbook and searched through it several times and can't seam to find any duplicated points and C3D doesn't tell you what the points are.  Any Thoughts?

Thanks,

Gregg