survey points from Leica GPS to AutoCAD

[TECHSERVICES]

I"m using a brand spanking new Leica gps...did a quick landscape grade topo, came back and downloaded a DXF. opened it in AutoCAD 2017, (not civil 3d) and i cannot seem to manipulate the point settings... i cannot have the elevations or any of the data for that matter display...   ANY HELP WOULD BE USEFUL. TIA.

@TECHSERVICES,

john.vellek has edited your subject line for clarity: survey points

[rkmcswain]

So if you are in vanilla AutoCAD, what kind of entities are these "points". Are they true AutoCAD POINT entities, or INSERTS or what?

Please post a sample drawing, or we are just guessing.

[john.vellek]

Hi @TECHSERVICES,

If you could attach your DXF this would be much easier to visualize.  Also, I haven't worked with the latest Leica gear but I imagine that in the export there are numerous settings that are allowed such as elevation. 

Please provide a bit more info and hopefully a file to look at.

Please select the Accept as Solution button if my post solves your issue or answers your question.

[TECHSERVICES]

 in properties the vertical (z) is there.... it only identifies it a 'point'....   attached is the DXF just as i have uploaded it. I do not believe i should have to turn on a autocad attribute prior to upload (at the menu location in the digital field book).

[Mark_C_123]

Do you have access to Civil CAD? 

[rkmcswain]

I'm not sure what the problem is. That DXF file contains AutoCAD POINT entities that do have varying "Z" values.

Are you expecting them to be annotated?

[TECHSERVICES]

no civil CAD.

[TECHSERVICES]

yes i was hoping for them to be annotative.  with a smaller 20-40 point infill FLG .dwg sure this is fine as i can manually copy&paste an elevation bubble... but for bigger 1000+ pt. surveys... to not be able to draw up and complete a baseplan, well that aint' an option.

ascii - downloads via .txt file... which of course is not workable  in vanilla cad.

XML is no good in vanilla cad

.fbk isn't workable in vanilla cad

perhaps i can open the survey in a .dwg  RIGHT in the data collector and try uploading from there...   all i want is the bare bones, ie.) elevations to show up... 

[rkmcswain]

Well, AutoCAD is only going to display what the DXF file includes. So unless the application that writes the DXF file can include the annotation, you're out of luck.

There are add-ons for AutoCAD that can take the ASCII data and create annotated points in AutoCAD (Example: http://dotsoft.com/mapworks.htm )

[john.vellek]

Hi @TECHSERVICES,

I adjusted PDMODE to 34 and set a PDsize as well. I then created a field and attached it to each point. Then I did a DATAEXTRACTION to capture the point data. Does this help?

Please select the Accept as Solution button if my post solves your issue or answers your question.

[TECHSERVICES]

this helps a great deal john, thank you.  This will work for smaller 20-50 point infill landscape grade surveys, but as it pertains to bigger 2000+ point surveys i will need my descriptive field in order to properly draw up the baseplan.   

That said, is there a cad package somewhere in between civil 3d and my vanilla?  i presume not as i understand LDD was absorbed in '08 with the first roll out of civil 3d.....   

[john.vellek]

Hi @TECHSERVICES,

Is there an option of putting the descriptor in the DXF from the Leica unit?

[TECHSERVICES]

i am going to be bouncing all of this of of my tech support from leica this week.  Thank you John... as soon as i move on this i will bring my findings back to you.    this is all appreciated.  This forum is a life saver for all us smaller one horse muni guys!.

cheers.

dave.

[rkmcswain]

TECHSERVICES wrote:

... is there a cad package somewhere in between civil 3d and my vanilla?  i presume not as i understand LDD was absorbed in '08 with the first roll out of civil 3d.....

Roughly speaking, Civil 3D debuted around 2005. LDT's last version was 2009. So they overlapped for several years. If you are limiting your search to Autodesk products, then no, there are no other choices. If you are considering other vendors, then there are other choices.

[TerryDotson]

... is there a cad package somewhere in between civil 3d and my vanilla?

If you were to consider third party add-ons, take a look at DotSoft's MapWorks.  You can try the full working evaluation for 60 days.  Most likely it will import from your Leica point files and if not we would be happy to work with you to add that functionality.