I have been working in TBC for a little over 2 years now and have a couple of suggestions for features that could be included in future updates.
1. Recap exports. Currently only the point clouds and regions are exported, without adding stations, photos for stations or any annotations. A way to export these properly would be a vital way to save time on exporting a recap file of a point cloud while retaining the station views.
2. CAD Rotate function. Currently this function is very poorly implemented compared to other functions such as move, trim/extend and break. An implementation to rotate by reference rather than the point and angle would immediately improve the function. A separate 3D rotate command could also be implemented to more easily add slopes to a line.
3. The latest versions of TBC have broken some of the icons (point cloud regions for example). While functional it should be a priority to allow easy access to essential functions and to fix the icons so that we don't have to guess what a symbol like this [X] means.
4. Updating from previous to latest versions should retain any saved views for things such as toolbar preferences (I do not want to have to remove Take-Off from my preferred views every time a new update comes out). The ability to automatically recognise and update user templates would be a great help going forward.
5. Limit Boxes seem to be prone to crashing the program. Is there a fix/solution in the works or is it still going to be a gamble to use these going forward.
6. Imports of new pointcloud data seem to double up pointcloud regions and add them back into the "default" region, effectively doubling the size of the point cloud if regions were made. This bug needs fixing as it can unnecessarily bloat file size.
7. Merging projects currently doesn't function properly, nor does it merge point clouds of said projects (it can mess with the position of point clouds regardless, with no fix other than restarting without saving). Please look into a fix for this as it can, if implemented properly, greatly smoothen the workflow for return visits to sites and reduce the number of working projects needed.
8. TDX imports from the X7 tend to renumber scans in a rather unintuitive way ( 1-1, 1-2, 1 as an example) and they often get grouped together quite messily. The opportunity to renumber points from a TDX, such as how CSV points can be renumbered if duplicate numbers are found, could help organise scans in a more intuitive way without having to manually renumber them post import.
9. Move survey point always closes the function after it has resolved. The ability to remedy this by allowing us to say whether we want to close the command after executing (such as for exporting data) could help speed up future workflows by allowing users to decide when they are done with the function.
10. Removing sections of the filter view that are unnecessary to a given project (such as sheet layout or road data) should be streamlined so that it can more easily be performed.
These questions/suggestions are just a list of some of the grievances I have with an otherwise very useful piece of software for surveying. If some of these could be looked at (or if there are already fixes that I can be pointed in the right direction to) I would highly appreciate it.
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John-Paul Killyleagh
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