Trimble Business Center

I'm working up a budget price for a client to build a pond and he doesn't want to pay for a topo at this point.  The best data I can find online are USGS maps with 10' contour intervals.  When I was in school Autocad had a way of importing surface data directly from google earth but that feature is no longer supported (or so I'm told).  Does TBC have a similar feature that I can use?  

The feature is not directly integrated in CIvil3D but there are a few apps that you can buy that will do the same thing. I recently used this and it was great. TBC does not have this functionality. I think it would be awesome if TBC did support this.

This is great for budgets like you mention. 

Also try: NOAA: Data Access Viewer 

Thanks for the link but unfortunately I'm too far inland.  I was able to make the USGS contours work for this bid. 

Any experience using photogrammetry with TBC?  Our company has a phantom 4 quad copter that I think may work but I would need to purchase the module first to find out.  I've been told it can take days to calculate a surface.  

The photogrammetry module no. But I use points clouds from drones for a decent amount of our projects. I generate them using either Pix4D or Trimbe Stratus.  I highly recommend it.

If you are just starting out I would recommend looking into Trimble Stratus. You upload the photos, their team processes and you will have you data back within 24 hours (usually around 12 from what I have seen). I have had great results with this and it is great for beginners and those that don't have time to process the data.

Feel free to email me if you want to discuss: plheureux@severinotrucking.com

Thanks!  I'll look into Trimble Stratus too.

Ben,

I agree, having the ability to import GE topo into TBC would be great. I had to pull the information off of GE and run it through TCX Converter to get the information into TBC. To answer your question on Photogrammetry in TBC. I teach classes on how to use UAS Master with TBC. We have a lot of clients that like to processes the flight in house as a check. One of the big features that they like is the ability to calibrate TBC to the field calibration, and carry that into UAS Master.  So it does not matter if the site is State Plane or Local. Once the processing is done. You just send it back into TBC and the point cloud and Ortho falls right into place. You can do point cloud clean up in UAS Master or TBC.

I just finished a video on how to take the surface from the drone flight, and put that into the DJI Phantom 4 RTK to use with the terrain awareness feature.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Another benefit to having the ability to pull in generic surface data on a known vertical datum into TBC would be having a cheap and simple target surface for corridor modeling.  Many times I have been given a design / plan set to stake with no original ground surface.  It would be beneficial to pull in a generic surface to target side slopes even if it is only marginally accurate. 

See this link:

Working with Terrain Data — QGIS Tutorials and Tips 

It's for Qgis, but it will show you how to get terrain data in geotiff which Autocad can create a surface from.