Trimble Business Center

I started working with TBC-HCE six years ago when the company I was with acquired it. At the time it seemed odd because all the machine control/field gear was and still is Topcon. My general workflow is gathering data, assembling and processing in HCE and finally exporting DWG, LandXML and TXT files. I assemble the files using Topcon 3D-Office into a project file that can be used with the Topcon gear.

This week I started a new local City Engineering street project. While talking to one of the City’s lead surveyors to get extra data he mentioned they had recently acquired Trimble Business Center. He said they design with Civil 3D, use Trimble gear but that BC was still in the learning curve phase. He had previously sent out a TTM finish grade surface file along with a LandXML file for the same surface. When I imported them into my HCE the surfaces are exactly the same. Now I wanted an alignment file in LandXML format. He said he could also export an RXL file for the alignment that might also work. When I imported all the CAD, LandXML and CSV data into HCE it all aligned up perfectly. However the RXL file was over 20,000 feet away, pointing the wrong way and the stationing was off.

I’m assuming that there are settings either on his end or my end that would need to be changed for an RXL file to actually work for me. Can anyone suggest where I can look for some guidance with this? I will continue to ask for my usual data for modeling but perhaps the RXL file might be useful too.

Interesting issue George Henry - I would have thought it should have just worked, however it sounds like it was written in Metric not US Feet. You can try importing it into a Metric Project in BC-HCE and then change the Units of the Project from Meters to Feet to see if it is then in the correct place. My guess is that the NE are also switched from US Feet to Metric files which would explain why it was at a funny angle.

I will try an RXL output this week to see what it does and what options you have on export, but that sounds to me like what he has done.

Alan

Alan, I’m sure you are correct about some metric setting. I opened both files using Internet Explorer and can read the instructions. In the RXL file it seems that the north and east numbers when converted from metric to feet come close to the LandXML file numbers.

I tried importing the RXL file into a new project using metric units, changing the settings to Int Feet then exporting it as an RXL alignment. When I imported that file into my working model project it still shows up in the wrong location and facing the wrong direction.

At this point I’m going to hand it back the the City surveyor with our observations. Thank you for looking at this.

Check if angular settings are correct degrees/grad ...

Apologies for not following up on this. About a week ago I was looking at data for another project close to the first one. It was in the same coordinate system by the same survey team. I was placing it on Google Maps for a better understanding of the locale. With the two projects showing correctly I re-imported the questionable RXL file. This one perfectly lined up with a third City project that I had nothing to do with. After letting survey know my discovery I was sent the correct RXL file and it imported and exactly matched the LandXML file. 

I understand the City has a number of upcoming similar reconstruct projects coming up so more exploration of RXL v LandXML may be happening.