Trimble Business Center

What is the proper way to disassociate a TBC file with a particular site? Many of our project files are linked to a site and TCC but I'd like to be able to remove that connection maybe as a "save-as" to be able to modify the project data without affecting or needing to resolve conflicts with field data. 

My recommendation is that for each project (and I know this is a generalization that all sites can be run the same way) 

1) There should only be one project where the Project is driving the Jobsite and all of its Design Content - all other linked projects should have been Linked using Add external Site. When you do this your Project ettings for Field Data should all be set to Protection On - that way a change you make to the Jobsite or Design Data in the Project cannot be sent back out to the field (this is effectively a dissociated project), yet it will allow you to import a copy of the Design Map and Design Surfaces etc that are not linked to the "External Design". You can change those as much as you want and if you want then to send the changed models to the field you can but only as a New Name - the protections will stop you sending out replacement files only New Files for New Designs.

2) When you have everything as (1) when you try to add an External Design, the Protection will stop you from doing this and allow you to import a copy of the Design Data from a controller folder system only - this will be the same as the source data but is just a copy of what is in the controller (TTM for a Surface and Linework from a DXF) - the objects imported are not referenced to the Design at all and so changes will not affect anything.

3) Because your Calibration and Control is protected you will not be able to change that on any controller

4) Because your Site Map is Protected you will not be able to change that either

5) Because your Design Data is protected you cannot change that on any device. You could however Reassign or add assigned controllers to a design when it is referenced into a project

However once you have referenced a Job Site into a Project we do not allow you to remove it as we do not / did not forsee any time that someone would want to reference a single BC-HCE Project to more than one Job Site on SCS900 or GCS900 etc. If you dont want that connection then don't add an External Jobsite and simply drag and drop the data from the Jobsite, Design and Work Order Folders as you need them. If you have referenced an External Jobsite and you want to Protect it, make sure that your Project Settings for Field Data Protection are all enabled, then the data is safe no matter what you do in the project.

Does this answer your question?

Alan

You can also select the Job Site in the project Explorer and hit CTRL D to delete it. That takes it out of the project without damaging any of the Controller data on the Sync Folders on your PC, Network or TCC. I guess this may have been what you were looking for. I still recommend that you have a project Master for each Project that you use to manage all of your Field data outputs

Alan

Alan,

So if I am reading this correctly you would have basically two different TBC projects.  One like you said where you will manage that site calibration and all the data you are wanting to send out to data collectors and machines.(master project)  And then you would have a second project where you would "build and edit the design data"  which you could then import that data into your master project.  This has been something I have questioned for awhile now.  I like to make a preliminary design to use when I complete my site cals to help me orientate myself on the project and possibly collect additional data once the site cal is done to help fine tune my model such as edges of pavement  or culverts I might be tying into.  The problem is that a lot of the time I have for example the CL of a project with the stationing and maybe the 2d line work of some proposed features.  If I make changes to any of that data my prelim design will show a conflict and it wants to either update the design on the controller or if I say no and use the controller data it brings it into my job so now I have multiples of the same line.  I would like to not change that design information because it is a record of sorts of what you had at that time you completed a task.  I wish there was a simpler way of doing this.

Ben

If you have revisions - I would make a VCL output of the data prior to revising so that is your Rev 1 archive and then you can always get it back later if needed. Your project can then be updated and then you should update the controllers so they have the latest versions. The alternative is to save the VCE project as Rev 1 and then as Rev 2 and then make changes - the Rev 2 will maintain the connection to the controllers and allow you to continue to update them with changes - the downside to this is that when you open the Rev 1 project it wi flag all the changes - so I would detach the Rev 1 from the projects on the devices so that did not happen.

The VCL out would be my preferred method of working to back up my revisions if I needed them later

Alan

Sent from my iPhone

Thank you Alan.  I appreciate your response.  However, do you think it would be possible in the future to somehow archive the designs so that everything for a project could simply stay in one job?  What if when you make a revision to a design and you archive the first design it simply writes the data out to a .csv file for points, .dxf file for line work and a .ttm for the surface.  I would basically be breaking down the components of the design to there simple form and storing them.  Then if you wanted to bring that original information back into your project you could with the option of putting it on new layer.

Thanks,

Ben

Let me noodle on this Ben - I really want to get our ViaNova Quadri Model attachedto TBC so that we can store an entire project from Start to Finish in a Database, and then only Load the data that we need from the Database - we really have to get away from Files and Revisions of Files to a Database that contains all of the revisions. 

We acquired the Vianova Company for this specific reason and to this point we don't have the integration to a point where you can leverage it - the Database is the way to solve all of these issues throughout the lifetime of a project.

You can look at Novapoint / Quadri on You Tube if you are interested and wish to comment ....

Alan