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 "Convert TGO Project" Successor?

John Castle's profile image
John Castle posted 11-03-2023 15:29

Hello,

I am trying to find a way to access old survey data from the TGO days. I have had no luck opening up the .DC or .job files from 2000 in TBC on my computer or Access on a TSC7. I also cannot load them onto the original TSC2 used, which is running Survey Controller v12 now. The .job file appears to be v7.0.39 so I'm guessing TSC v12 won't be able to open it.

I'm also aware that TBC no longer supports conversion of TGO projects, as the "Convert TGO Project" command was mothballed in September 2020, I've discovered.

So, I am wondering if anyone has creative ideas to revive these old files from their unsupported purgatory.

p.s. - These files are not supported by the Attachment Uploader either, but I can at least see what's inside the .DC file in a text editor. Uploaded that as a .txt file.

Andrew Klingenberg's profile image
Andrew Klingenberg

If you have the installation files for your Survey Controller v12.x, one of those programs used in the installation steps was to convert the Trimble Data (i.e. job files) from prior versions of Survey Controller to the new version of Survey Controller you were installing.  They typically handled files going back some number of versions, in this case probably back to at least the 10.x versions, but there was a big leap between Survey Controller 7.x and 10.x so it may not work there.  If you can run that EXE you may be able to get the .job file converted to load on your TSC with SC 12.x.  And if you get that far I think the Access job file converters in the installers (not the onboard converters) can reach back to SC 11.x so you might be able to get your job on a current version of Access.

I am surprised that TBC won't read DC files older than V10.

The other thing you can try is changing the version header in the DC file to show it as a V10 rather than the current V07.  The DC file format is mostly backward-compatible -- though some records are no longer valid and there can be differences in expected order of records in newer versions.  I tried that on your file and it did load in TBC, with a warning of an incomplete projection, but the GPS vectors did load up.  I would want to do some spot checks to validate the import but it has the appearances of working OK, and the coordinate system will need to be fixed as well.

James McWha's profile image
James McWha

The *.Job file is from Trimble Digital Fieldbook v7. You might find that you can import this file directly into TBC. If that does not work try using Processing Service to see if you can convert if to a later version job file.