Hi Phyllis,
Happy to expand. So again, all from the perspective of a C3D user processing survey data, typically from a crew chief's data collector. The way I learned to process topographic survey data:
1) Survey crew topos a site and provides a .CSV from their data collector. This CSV contains shots on features like manholes, signs, etc as well as linework features like curb, gutter, etc.
2) We use C3D's feature of creating a Survey Database and push the CSV through the database
3) For Points the Description Key Set feature of C3D handles point symbology and labeling
4) For Linework the Survey Figure Prefix Database handles of C3D drawing in the linework
While I’m sure it varies from company or region, we've always used PNEZD format (comma delimited) for our import format; Point Number, Northing, Easting, Elevation, and Description. So a crew chief goes and takes a shot on a sanitary manhole as Point #1 at northing of 5000, easting of 10000, and elevation of 1000. The CSV would need to look as such for CAD to accept it.
1,5000,10000,1000,MHSS
Thanks for pointing out the library schema. I played around with it, it looks like you can add custom properties and later remove them, but it doesn't look like I can reduce down the information. When I experimented with exporting out linear features from Recap what I get for columns (from left to right) is
#PointNumber
Easting
Northing
Point Elevation
Linear Feature ID
Line ID
Line-point ID
Title
FeatureCode
Category
Description
Color
It’s more or less the same situation with point exporting. To be honest the landXML export feature for points works pretty well as CAD reads the feature code when you pull points out of the cloud, but the CSV option gives a lot of excess data. Ultimately the point number, northing, easting, elevation, and feature code is all I need, and because I don’t have choices on order I have to swap northing and easting after I trim it down.
Additionally C3D has a linework Code Set feature it uses to determine when to draw lines. This means for CAD to properly draw linework it is looking for beginning and end linework code commands in addition to the code. IE: If GU is your code for shooting gutter your first shot should be GU B and your last shot should be GU E.
Since there is no way to define linework codes we have to manually add these codes into the CSV after exporting. Ideally when selecting a line inside of Recap you could tell it what the beginning and end codes for that line are and when you export to CSV the export would assign it to the first and last code of the linework you extracted.
In summary what I believe needs to be done to make CSV work efficiently is as follows:
-Allow us to select which features we want exported, either by defining our own schema or by checkbox on export
-Allow us to order the columns the way we want as there is undoubtedly some variety between companies/regions
-Linear features should have beginning and ending linework features to specify.
Cheers
