Surveyor's Control Points Not Alligning w/ Floor Plan

[ben]

This one might sound tricky and a bit confusing, but I'll try my best to explain.

We just bought a Total Station, and we are going to try it out on a small job for a trial run, and I'm trying to get everything loaded into the tablet so it's ready to go. I exported the Revit floor plan to dwg, and imported it to the tablet for the Total Station (Unit: Inches). So far, so good. I get the control points from the surveyor (7 Control Points) for the 15' setbacks from the foundation walls at the building's corners (Units: Int Feet, Delimiter: Comma). Now the coordinates setting is where it seems a bit confusing to me; my options are: XYZ(NEH), NEH, ENH, XYH(NEH), XYZ(ENH), YXH(ENH), and YXZ(NEH). The surveyor told me that in the txt file the information is point, northing, easting, elevation, description. I have literally tried importing the control points in for every coordination setting that is in that order XYZ(NEH), NEH, XYH(NEH), and YXZ(NEH); I have also tried importing all of them in every combination trying to use different units as well (Int Feet, US Feet, and Inches). No matter what settings I use the result is always the same, even though all 7 control points are loaded only 1 point shows up on the screen and the floor plan nowhere to be found, or appears to be a tiny speck that I cant even zoom in enough to see it.

I called the manufacturer of the total station and he said that the surveyor might be using a State Plane Coordinate System, which I had never heard of because I'm not a surveyor and I don't pretend to know the systems and methods that they use. I emailed him & asked if it was based on a State Plane Coordinate System; he emailed me back and said, "They are close to UTM 14N but not perfect because a ground scale was applied. They may be off a quarter inch from UTM14N." I have no idea what that means, I Googled it and it says it has something to do with NAD83. I also don't know what that means either, I'm assuming it's a method of surveying, but I don't plan on taking up surveying as a hobby, so is there just a way to get his points to work with Revit, my dwg export, or import on the tablet so I don't have to do some crazy survey marker control point conversion?

Control Point txt file is attached if it helps at all

[barthbradley]

Can you post the txt file? There's only 3 you need.  The point number/description you don't. 

[ben]

txt file is attached to the original post

[barthbradley]

try this...

...Sorry, @ben. I'm spacing out a bit here.  That won't help you. I'll translate properly in a few.  

[ben]

Still didn't work

[barthbradley]

@ben: How 'bout I teach you to fish in the mean time?  

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YSMwyT_UUk

[barthbradley]

@ben: Something ain't adding up here. I'll come back to it later and see if can figure out what happen at #7.  This should get you pointed in the right direction though.  

Ben.pngBen2.png

...source info: 

Ben3.png

[ben]

After talking with manufacturer of the Total Station, it appears that the surveyor is using points that exist for using survey points across the country and that's what all the reference to NAD83, UTM 14N, etc; what she called "real world survey points", and the model does not use those, it just uses 0,0 because as she said, "They don't care because it doesn't really pertain to their work." So it sounds like I have 2 different types of survey points, and that's why the one the surveyor gave me show the points almost 16 million 'units' away. I assume that's latitude & longitude. I can only assume that the export unit is inches because 16 million inches is roughly 250 miles, which is about how for the jobsite is from Lebanon, KS; which I found out today (from trying to figure out why the heck this isn't working) is the Geographic center of the contiguous United States, which is something important for surveyors when doing their work, like their base point or something.

So I'm honestly not sure where to go from here. I suppose I'll call an guy I know that works for an electrical contractor and see when they do when they run into this problem.

[barthbradley]

Ben-A.pngBen-B.png

[barthbradley]

I don't know what to tell you, buddy. I'm off by 5.509 feet. Either there's an 8th point or their survey is wrong.  Can't you just request the Plat Map?  

...some City or County department in your neck of the woods has got to have the recorded Plat on file. 

[ToanDN]

Ask the surveyor to give you a vanilla AutoCAD drawing exported from Civil3D or whatever program they use. Don't let them send you the native Civil3D DWG because it is useless unless you have Civil3D to save it to plain AutoCAD.  After you get the drawing, link it in Center to Center, move it to align with you model, then Acquire Coordinates.  Then, just draw the Property lines using sketch and pick their lines.

[ben]

Here is the pdf he sent me of what the point layouts should look like around the building

[barthbradley]

WTF!  This PDF has absolutely nothing to do with the txt file you had me working on.  Zero, zip, nada.  

[ben]

Those are the points in the txt file. It's not a property line, they are setback stakes from the foundation wall. They actually make a similar shape as the points you had figured out. These are the 2 things the surveyor sent me, that pdf and the txt file of the points.

[barthbradley]

The surveyor gave you another piece of information: 15'-0" Setback.  That's the setback from the property lines.  Offset your property lines 15'-0" (inward) and that's your building envelope. 

...you know, I'm getting confused too.  But, whatever that txt file represents; property lines or setback lines -- it is what it is.  A boundary of some sort.  

[ben]

They are 15' setback points from the foundation wall (they set those for the concrete guys so they know where to measure for the corners of their footings). But he doesn't show if those points are off of grid lines. If I manually put those points in assuming they are 15' off of certain gridlines, and they're not, then I'm f-ed.

[ben]

@ToanDN Finally got his civil dwg. Plan North & True North are not exact. Which do I move & rotate, the linked dwg or the revit model?

[barthbradley]

the Link

...what a minute, You have true north set up in your project already? Link to True North then. Or are you saying their true north doesn't match yours?  

[ben]

Ok, I linked in the civil dwg, rotated & aligned it, and did the Acquire Coordinates, tuned off the dwg in VG's, exported to dwg, loaded dwg & control points back on the tablet, and it's still doing the same thing; all 7 control points loaded, but only one shown on the screen and no drawing.

[barthbradley]

Rotated and aligned it to what? True North or Project North?