Author Topic: Converting CSV to FBK  (Read 7422 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

sinc

  • Guest
Converting CSV to FBK
« on: January 17, 2007, 03:43:51 PM »
As with a LOT of people, we've had a lot issues with Civil-3D's Survey functionality.

The first is that we still have rather old data-collectors, which do not have alphanumeric keypads.  Autodesk's "field linework" support is based on the fact that the field surveyor will key in Figure Commands inside of Notes.  And unfortunately, even though we could dump our description keys from C3D into our data collectors, the data collectors won't use the library in Notes - only in Point Descriptions.  That meant our field guys needed to do lots of painful typing on the phone-style keypads on their data collectors.

Then there's the fact that we already have software that handles things like prism offsets, etc., and reduces raw data to PNEZD coordinates, so having that functionality in C3D is not incredibly useful to us right now.  We may want to move to it in the future, because handling it there is a lot more flexible and powerful, but not right now, while we're still in the middle of transitioning from Land Desktop.  Setting up C3D styles is enough of a monster that we REALLY don't want to worry about setting up Equipment Databases, and so forth.  Couple that with the fact that Autodesk doesn't seem to understand what US Survey Feet are, and it's a mess we very much want to deal with later, and not now.

There are more problems, too, the most-significant having to do with the way that Figures are stored in Survey Databases.  Since we often work with more than one EG surface in a project, we've been hard-hit by the fact that the Survey Database lumps all Survey Figures into one big pile.  This causes a problem when it comes to creating breaklines in surfaces from Survey Figures.  There is no good way to create multiple EG surfaces in a single project, especially when each survey has 30 figures called simply "TOE", short of creating one Survey Database for each EG surface.  But of course, using multiple Survey Databases basically kills any reason to use Survey Networks.  So we have no interest in using the Survey Database at this time.  It's much easier for us to create CSV dumps of field data in our accustomed way, using the software in our data collectors (or TGO, which handles US Survey Feet CORRECTLY), and then dump the reduced data into C3D.  But we still want the auto-linework...

So I've written a small Perl routine that takes a CSV file with linework commands embedded in the Point Descriptions, and turns it into a FBK file that can be dumped into C3D.  It might also work with Land Desktop, although it might require some tweaks (I haven't tried it).  The routine even connects strings, allowing field surveyors to collect multiple Survey Figures at once, and can connect multiple strings to a single field shot.  It's not as nice as Stringer, but it's FREE!  And the code is free to modify to suit your needs.

This page has more details on what it does, how it works, and how to use it, for anyone who is interested.

dmoose

  • Guest
Re: Converting CSV to FBK
« Reply #1 on: December 03, 2019, 10:14:27 AM »
page link is not working

Jeff_M

  • King Gator
  • Posts: 4087
  • C3D user & customizer
Re: Converting CSV to FBK
« Reply #2 on: December 03, 2019, 11:23:58 AM »
Using web.archive.org I found this:
https://web.archive.org/web/20080623011327/http://www.ejsurveying.com/csv_to_fbk.aspx

Sinc died in 2012 so there won't be anyone who can help with this beyond that link. It appears that the zip file with the perl script was not cached by the archive. You might ask someone at EJ Surveying if that file was saved when the did their website update a few years ago. Of course, C3D has come a long ways since 2007 so it may now do what you need instead of requiring that old script.