Category Archives: Surveying
GPR and Surveying at Hilti
High-tech tools for construction surveying can also be used by land surveyors and new surveyors. By Jeff Salmon Construction, both residential and commercial, is the second-largest industry in the world–surpassed only by agriculture. From site plans and stakeouts to as-built surveys and, now, BIM, construction has and will continue to provide a major market for...
Project Management, Collaboration, the Cloud, and Robots!
Above: An autonomous farm tractor drives on a demonstration course at Trimble Dimensions. In addition to following predefined paths and instructions, the on-board tractor systems can sense and react to obstacles. Trimble launches a new solution for construction project management– and takes a futuristic leap into autonomous construction vehicles. by Matteo Luccio and John Stenmark Editor’s...
Workflow in Constructioneering
To remove workflow barriers among surveying, engineering, and construction, Topcon Positioning and Bentley Systems are teaming up. Compartmentalization in AEC workflows is a universal curse, with individual segments in design and construction often operating more like discrete enterprises than integral phases. All too often, legacy processes are plagued with a series of fits and starts....
Caught Mobile Mapping
Above: Using a mobile mapping system, Construction CAD Solutions can generate high-accuracy point cloud data–in multiple views, as shown above and at left–to assist in its utility design function. Mobile mapping: A Chicago firm uses lidar innovation to survey for fiber infrastructure–for hundreds of miles. By Larry Trojak The ability to identify, accept, and then...
Surveying States: Different, Yet the Same
With the President’s Day holiday recently behind us, a day I refer to as Surveyor’s Day (think Mt. Rushmore) and National Surveyors Week starting on March 18, 2017, I can’t help but think about surveyors across the United States as a whole. Although my entire professional practice has been in California, over those years I have...
GNSS & Educational Equations: A Grid-to-Ground Project
When planning GNSS control surveys on highway projects, it is important to understand the limitations of GNSS. Most highway projects are long, and linear distances that are wide open horizontally and vertically and are ideal for GNSS surveying. However, in rural and city areas, tree canopies and high-rise buildings will obstruct the GNSS signals, so...
