Trimble Business Center

I'm a land surveyor and my goal is to export a universal CSV file out of TBC and import it straight into C3D. I would like it to be able to be used on every job, even if some jobs don't have specific features located, such as fences or trees.

I have specific attributes associated with boundary corners, fences, trees, etc. that I would like to be in a consistent format for when I import the CSV into C3D.

I have tried the custom format editor, but it puts all the attributes into 1 column. I have also tried the export feature attributes but it includes features that I don't want to be included in a CSV export (e.g. images)

Is there a way to have a custom feature export that includes specific attributes in a specific sequence. Ideally it would have the format of P,N,E,Z,D,"attribute1","attribute2",etc...

Attribute 1 being "boundary corner material", Attribute 2 being "boundary corner size", Attribute 3 being "Type of Tree", etc...

i don't know that you can do what you are asking, but using the feature attributes and organizing your fxl in a manner that makes what you are wanting work is what we do. for example if you have the photo attribute in position 5 for all features then it is easy to ignore it in civil. i don't think what you are trying to do will work, having each attribute column mean something different, but it is easy to assign different kinds of attributes in civil for column 1. maybe this is what is missing in your workflow? we use description keys in civil to then display different points with different attributes in different ways. hope this helps. 

I think what you are talking about is using the same descriptor codes (pin, hyd, log, foc, etc) between TBC and C3D. I found that I had to build an FXL for TBC and a separate Description Key Set in C3D as they don't talk the same language. What I've built isn't perfect (more coding/layer management in C3D) for point control than TBC where I've done pretty much a less complex FXL to work with feature codes.

yes, shawn this is what i was trying to describe.

to the original question. we custom export from tbc, feature codes and attributes, in a csv. comma delimitator. the attributes come out in different columns:

i was trying to describe building your fxl with blank entries if you wanted to delete a whole column from the csv before going into civil. we typically have to do some csv manipulations anyways mostly because of alpha point numbers.

and i guess the other point i was making is that the column does not really matter if the description keys are setup to know what they are looking for in each column. the photo attribute can be useful in civil even if not linked. 

Gotcha. A much more intricate detailing of data than just PNEZD. I've not had to go beyond that so wasn't totally sure what you were trying to do.

This is similar to what we do. I'm not involved on the CAD side of it as much, but one of our PLS set up a comprehensive import and labeling for ACAD from the survey database that  attributes and automates a number of tasks including the math for manhole inverts from dip attributes and recently scrips for rotating various blocks to a "rotate" attribute. All this from a csv export. Basically, the FXL file is easy enough to set up (my part), but the question requires a lot of CAD knowledge to solve.