Trimble Business Center

I am trying to provide a calibration report to a subcontractor who is running topcon. when I go to do the site calibration report, it is gray and nothing happens when I select it. Also, my .cal file shows the right lat longs and the wrong NEElev BUT both controllers and the machine control are all based on files from my business center and they haven't had any problems. I'm very confused as to why I have different NE numbers and it still works correctly.

Anyone have any insight in this issue? or can tell me how to decipher the .cal file without the report

Going to go ahead and answer my own question:

I created a calibration many months after I created a job. I never did the actual site calibration in business center and the site calibration report will not run until you do that step. 

Survey > Network > Site Calibration

I checked:

-horizontal calibration

-vertical calibration

   - (vertical shift + incline plane)

I didn't check:

-update project definition

The issue with the .cal file itself is that for some reason, while the whole project is in feet, the cal file was in meters so I read all the wrong numbers in the text version and freaked out. I realized it when I was reading the site calibration report and everything was 1/3 of what it should be. 

In summary, you cant just drag and drop in a calibration file. Even though it appears, you actually need to do the calibration itself and check your units in your project settings.

I have noticed that as well. You need to rerun the site cal in order to get the report which I don't necessarily agree with because you could alter the site cal in the process. It is not a simple read only type process.

I have noticed this as well.

In may case, I had to re-run / apply the site calibration to the project and recompute in order to generate the site calibration report.

To get my calibration report, I use the SCS report utility and open the work order that the calibration was done in. Under the report tab it should list all each control point shot with the NEZ and LAT LONG and ELIPS height. I the then hand enter the info into the Topcon Localization file, and make sure the residual errors match in each system are the same.

I see you have the CAL sorted out, make sure you lock it under "Settings - Computations - Field Data" to protect your data. Make sure when resolving conflicts from the controllers that your CAL does not changes, the CAL file can shift your project if it is different, so be careful here. I always save a hard copy/printout for backup and checking.

As for the Topcon CAL I always key-in the values to there "3D Office" software, this is the software that makes the *.tp3 file need for Topcon machines, I hope this help

Mike,

I read this post from Buck because I am very interested in this topic and use the Calibration Report for some people I work for, since it's the other half of what makes a good model good. 

I noticed that you are using 3D Office to enter in the Control for a project, I did this for a while to get Topcon equipment to work with Trimble but it's a lot of typing. This is the Python script that we made to get what is needed from a Tasklog without all of the typing and inevitable fat finger, you will need Python 3.0 or higher to run it, but it makes life much easier, what use to take around 30 minutes and sometimes a wrong value now takes about 2 minutes.

It will give you everything needed for the coordinates and the WGS LAT LONG Height, you only need to check what horizontals and verticals you want to use. It also gives you the ability to change them after the fact for trouble shooting. 

When you export it you will need to tell it what extension you want it to be .txt .csv, etc. Then make the corresponding import routine in 3D Office. A few steps have been skipped in the pictures but I'm sure you will get it.

Best regards, Jeff

You can always open a New Project, import the CAL File, and then you can run the Site Calibration calculations - Do Not change anything and run the report - that way you aren't going to screw up the project, nor are you going to create an updated Calibration that gets resent to all your devices etc..

If you have not run the Site Calibration Calculations in TBC, TBC doesn't know the calculations - only the answers / results so it cannot generate a Report on the Calculations. If you import the CAL file, it has which points were used for Horizontal and Vertical or both or points that were removed from the calculations. The TBC engine uses the same coordinate System Calculator that SCS900 / Siteworks uses so should give you the same answers with the same data start point.

If you decide to do a SaveAS of your Project so you could do this, make sure that you delete the SITE from the project Explorer because the links to the SCS900 / GCS900 / Siteworks / Earthworks will still be there otherwise and you can still affect the project for the devices if you don't delete the Site first (if you do not intend to make any changes to the Site Cal.

Reporting from the SCS900 Work Order Results is also an option, just the report is not as clean as it is from TBC

Alan

Alan

I do recall in earlier versions of TBC that when you imported a .dc file into tbc, the calibration was applied to the project upon import and was available to review and generate the report at that point.

Many Thanks

John Alexander, PLS | Bowman Consulting

You can report it once TBC has recomputed it, however it would be the .CAL

not the .DC file from SCS900 that you need to use as that has all the

Point Pairs in it whereas the DC file only has the results of the Site

Calibration (unless it comes from Access in which case it has all of the

Point Pair data as well.

Alan

On Mon, Sep 23, 2019 at 12:44 PM jalexander@bowmanconsulting.com <

Alan

Yes I was talking about Trimble Survey Controller and now Trimble Access.

Regards,

John Alexander, PLS | Bowman Consulting