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Anyone using A360 with a Laser Distance Measuring Device?

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Message 1 of 12
grumpygrizzly
4646 Views, 11 Replies

Anyone using A360 with a Laser Distance Measuring Device?

I'm doing my own business these days after years of working for the big bully boys out there that were designing $5 billion dollar projects for Intel only to have the factory locked and empty because the technology passed right by the design and construction phase.

 

I've doing as-built floor plans, plans for those people that watch too much History channel and decide they want to flip a house, poor guys that have to add a room to their house so the mother-in-law can move in, that kind of thing..

 

What I'm looking for is a program like Autocad that will take in bluetooth reading from my Leica LDM device.  The one I use now is a Disto E7100i, the i means bluetooth.. Why isn't that a b?? But I digress.

 

Leica has theor own software that will read the blue tooth reading and you can assign it to a line and it'll put a dimension next tot he line.  The only problem is, the line can be in any direction, squiggly,  or whatever.

 

I'd love to see maybe a N, S, E, W, button on the screen on my tablet that I can click before selecting the line.. Or if you have that one there, you don't have to draw lines at all, it should be able to..

 

Let's face it, 92% of all houses have 90 degree corners and those that don't make enough money to just go build a new house when they feel like it.

 

Ai tried using A360 Mobile, paid the subscription price for over a year but, never saw any features like this added.

 

Does anyone know of someone that writes add-ons for the A360 mobile that might want to give this a spin?

 

The way I do it now is just use it as a glorified tape measure, then draw a sketch with this thing a lot of you have never had to use in your young lives called a pencil and paper.. Very time consuming. 

 

Having my laptop is ANOTHER big time consumer trying to carry it and shoot measurements and then draw them in by hand. 

 

Drop me an email.. I KNOW I'm not the only one out there doing this..  Picture this, you could retire from working for that kid half your age that went to yo-yo U and is an engineer, move into an RV, wherever you decide to park for 6 months or so, get a business lices (Design, whatever), drop an Ad on Craigslist Services, and be ready to answer that phone.. a LOT..

 

There aer a few large companies that do this for big vendors but, I've only been called by the one time to layout some salespoints in a cellaphone store and they wouldn't share what they were using (if anything fancy) with me.

 

Thanks!

Give a man AutoCad, and he'll draw you a floor plan.
Give a man Revit and he'll build you a house.
Give Cadmama a couple of drinks and she'll have everyone singing Rockytop!
11 REPLIES 11
Message 2 of 12

Hi @grumpygrizzly


Thanks for the feedback, we highly appreciate it, and would definitely consider it for future version releases.
Unfortunately, at this point, we do not officially support Leica Disto devices. We are well aware of this need, and we'll be happy to contact you once we'll start developing such feature.

We know that currently the app's drafting capabilities need to be improved, I think you'll be pleased to hear that we're working constantly to improve and expend our designing tools, in order to provide our users with a better design experience than what we currently offer.
Advanced features such as editing properties fields (Layer and Color), new properties such as linetypes and lineweights, have been just added to the app's iOS latest release (soon to be available for Android as well). More accurate editing experience, more snap points, library of templates , library of general blocks, improvements of the touch gesture and much more, are currently in progress and we plan to include many of such improvements in our future version releases.

Please stay tuned to our Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/AutoCAD360?fref=ts) and blog (http://www.autocad360.com/blog) for details about the upcoming releases.

 

Thanks,

Best Regards,


Tirza Ben-Ner
AutoCAD 360 Support Specialist
Message 3 of 12
pendean
in reply to: grumpygrizzly

Your signature has the answer for which two programs you need to be using with Disto devices.

BTW, AutoCAD360 is not A360, these are two different products from Autodesk with almost identical names if you did not know.
Message 4 of 12

Thanks for the reply on the use of Autocad and Revit but, it's very hard to
carry a laptop around a jobsite or house in one hand and a handheld laser
in the other. I usually have my laptop with me and have to do a lot of
walking back and forth to put in the information.

I think we're really close to getting something going in the right way once
we can talk the developers into knowing what it is we're trying to do.

I can't be the only one trying this.

BTW, my Autocad is parts of my Revit Arch Suite 2010. It does me fine for
2D drawings with my customizations I've done.

I'llk go find the A360 forum and see if anyone is having luck there.


*Paul*



*Grumpys Designs360-977-9924Grumpys Email *
Give a man AutoCad, and he'll draw you a floor plan.
Give a man Revit and he'll build you a house.
Give Cadmama a couple of drinks and she'll have everyone singing Rockytop!
Message 5 of 12

Thanks for the reply on the use of Autocad and Revit but, it's very hard to
carry a laptop around a jobsite or house in one hand and a handheld laser
in the other. I usually have my laptop with me and have to do a lot of
walking back and forth to put in the information.

I think we're really close to getting something going in the right way once
we can talk the developers into knowing what it is we're trying to do.

I can't be the only one trying this.

BTW, my Autocad is parts of my Revit Arch Suite 2010. It does me fine for
2D drawings with my customizations I've done.

I'llk go find the A360 forum and see if anyone is having luck there.


*Paul*



*Grumpys Designs360-977-9924Grumpys Email *
Give a man AutoCad, and he'll draw you a floor plan.
Give a man Revit and he'll build you a house.
Give Cadmama a couple of drinks and she'll have everyone singing Rockytop!
Message 6 of 12
pendean
in reply to: grumpygrizzly

I use a Lenovo Windows touch-screen that folds back to be a "tablet" in the field with my Disto device with full AutoCAD/REVIT, as do most of my peers in my area that do the same line of work.

Only folks using iPads are interns and the marketing/bosses folks in suits in the offices showing off my hard work 🙂

Contact your DISTO maker and chat with their engineers about the realities of their products and their customers and how it's all used: I did at a trade show recently, it's enlightening.

Message 7 of 12

What version of Autocad are you running? I still have an old copy of 2010
that's been doing me just fine but, I've never looked into using it with my
Leicas.

Thanks for the response.


*Paul*



*Grumpys Designs360-977-9924Grumpys Email *
Give a man AutoCad, and he'll draw you a floor plan.
Give a man Revit and he'll build you a house.
Give Cadmama a couple of drinks and she'll have everyone singing Rockytop!
Message 8 of 12
pendean
in reply to: grumpygrizzly

AutoCAD 2016s are our go-to: we are internally testing 2017s, but won't implement until this summer.
Message 9 of 12
jamie
in reply to: tirza.ben-ner

I would also love an update to this along with everyone I know that use the mobile app. Subscription is a bit of a waste without the feature. I don't really want to buy a surface pro to do this if I can use an iPad I already have. I also don't want to stray to a £450 app from another developer when the office is bassed around AutoCAD for now. 

Message 10 of 12
pendean
in reply to: jamie

Friend, autoCAd360 is the wrong application for this type of connectivity.
Contact your company's "laser distance measuring device" creator and ask about compatible software/hardware that they actually design for.

Autodesk cannot create a backdoor solution for a third party product not designed for this software.

Good luck.
Message 11 of 12
grumpygrizzly
in reply to: pendean

I think I've found a viable solution and they've so far been able to beat Autodesk to the punch.

 

I found a beta program called Orthograph that's being developed by a firm in Hungary and I've been working with them in testing it and helping them use a little proper english on their websites. 

 

It was first developed for the IPad but, now they're concentrating on the Android version and it's definitely promising.

 

Basically, you go into a room, open the program and trace a very rough layout of the walls you want to draw.  Once you get back the the starting wall, it automagically takes the drawing and squares up the corners.  It's not to scale at this point but, be ready to have your mind blown in this next step.

 

Take your Leica Disto with bluetooth and Orthographic will make the connection, then start shooting your first distance on the first wall you sketched in.  Shoot from the first corner pointing to the second corner and presto, the program adjust the whole sketch to coincide with that shot.  Then on to the 2nd corner shooting to the 3rd corner and that wall gets locked in place (The first wall got locked in place and length I forgot to mention).  Once you work your way around the room, the walls are the correct length. 

 

From this point you can use their library and place windows and doors.  Then when you're done, you can export it to a .dxf file..

 

Ohh, did I mention, it's a 3D drawing as well?  Set your ceiling heights when you start and you're good to go. 

 

This thing is better than pockets on a shirt.  Takes a little getting used to but, what program doesn't. 

 

Here's the website:  https://www.orthograph.net/

 

I'm not a reseller, just a super beta tester and user.  They've asked me to take on the US market as they don't have any resellers here but, I'm a one man show.  I don't think the boss would be too happy about that. 

 

On that webpage, the ldm I use is the smaller one on the right.  Cost is $149.00 here in Portland, OR.

 

The software is $400 a year but, you can pretty much make that back on two small jobs in just the time you save doing the survey, then trying to see if you wrote down all the right measurements to put it in your fav cadd program.  Believe me, I've been there..

 

I know they have serious plans to team up with the folks from Leica as well.  That could get real interesting.

 

Pendean, I've actualy contacted Leica and tried their Leica Sketch program and it's a huge disappointment..  I've also tried at least 20 other programs out there.  Seems to be a lot more made for the suits using IPads than the workers in the field using Android systems.  One of them even has you calibrate standing 3' away fro a wall, shooting the ceiling, then the floor, and doing that two more times.. Doesn't seem like to accurate of a process to me..

Give a man AutoCad, and he'll draw you a floor plan.
Give a man Revit and he'll build you a house.
Give Cadmama a couple of drinks and she'll have everyone singing Rockytop!
Message 12 of 12

This question is old but AutoCAD now allows you to use a DISTO laser measurement device with the AutoCAD mobile app! 

You can connect a Leica DISTO device via bluetooth and add measurements directly to the DWG.

Use it to take as-built measurements while at the job site.

Here are the basics of how to use it:

  1. Make sure your phone or tablet's bluetooth is turned on
  2. Open your drawing in AutoCAD mobile
  3. Use the wand or settings to connect to the DISTO
  4. Start a line or polyline. The distance will be updated when as you take a measurement on the DISTO

Here are some resources to learn more:

http://blogs.autodesk.com/autocad/connect-leica-disto-autocad-mobile/

https://youtu.be/sm_MqqHd0mc

https://lasers.leica-geosystems.com/leica-disto-app-directory/autocad-mobile-app

 

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