Trimble Business Center

I wanted to open this can of worms again as it seems that this has come up a couple of times previously and it seems that TBC is still having issues.

If we are looking at TBC being able to offer a complete CAD solution, this is a fairly fundamental process that needs to be addressed, especially when creating linework from scan data.

DWG/DXF Handling:

It would be nice to be able to export 2D vertical / elevation DWG and DXFs, this is still a fairly consistent request as some people getting data out of TBC don't want anything other than this. Currently we are only supporting Horizontal 2D exports and there is no option to select the vertical (even if we had a cutting plane set up to export from).

Orthophotos:

Orthophotos can’t export with text and linework on them, being able to export an orthophoto PDF with markups and linework on it would be good.

Text:

Text placed in TBC is only viewable top down, we don't seem to be able to view text data vertically to annotate elevations, vertical designs or even orthophotos. It would be nice if text placed was able to be viewed perpendicular to any view.

Dynaviews in Cutting planes:

When looking at using Dynaviews in cutting planes we c put a cutting plane manually into a dynaview by creating a shape in the dynaview and creating a dynaview using the shape. If we then use the dynaview in a plan we can see the data in the plan in TBC. However when we export it out the export contains the template and the dynaview shape, none of the data within the dynaview is exported.

So for example we created a vertical cutting plane against linework for a building, created a shape in the cutting plane and used that to create a dynaview. When we added this to a drafting template and created a sheet set we were able to see the data in the dynaview in TBC, however when exporting it out the dynaview is empty.

We are also finding that when creating sheet sets in the drafting tab, when it gets to creating the dynaview through the process (so where you can select columns and rows for the dynaview placement) it can’t be put into a cutting plane. This workflow seems weird if we are able to achieve this manually in the above workflow.

Hey Ross,

I had a couple of these on our enhancement list previously, but I understand the more clearly, so thank you for the description!

1. I believe you can export orthophotos with dxf/dwg with CAD objects currently. Is your request to specifically be able to export orthophotos as PDFs?
2. The cutting plane/dynaview interaction seems like a bug. I'll get to investigating this when I get the chance.

-Joshua

Hi

Glad this is confirmed to be on the enhancement list !

I must add myself (again) to this request for feature - see here my post on same issue in Nov.2017 

Exporting Sheet or Plan view to 2D CAD file 

Vertical data will appear in a cutting plane Dynaview in TBC placed in plan view, but that is it - I can't get it to export either to Autocad format or when exporting a sheet set. Obviously for a 2D Elevation or section it would be ideal to create a Dynaview and place on a sheet or separately on the plan view (horizontally) for export to DWG.

Alan Sharp puts forward some useful and related information regarding Dynaviews here in the link below from Nov.2018, and explains why the "model space" data does not get exported from a dynaview (or from sheet)

Export Plan Sheets from TBC to Autodesk 

So it seems Dynaviews cannot be used to make a flat/projected copy of vertical model space data in this way yet, but it would be good if they could ! 

Hope this helps guide the discussion a bit further