Re: Construction layout - North American (and elsewhere) practice
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I'll be shortly be relaunching my hand-held lay-out package,
neXus, after rewriting it for Texas Instrument TI-85 and TI-83.
neXus has been around since 1989, when it began life on the old
Casio FX-730P. It's a simple shirt-pocket handheld application, allowing
site engineers to set out construction work by coordinates. It's a lay-
out program, NOT a survey application.
It's been reasonably successful locally (Belfast / Northern
Ireland) with some UK sales, but has always been strictly a beer-money
side-line - it's a very small market, and I've lost a lot of sales
through Casio's lousy customer support, which has made it hard to get
the hardware. Since then, I've wised up, dumped Casio and switched to
TI; and I've got on the Net. I aim to publish the package as shareware
on the Net as soon as it's ready. However, it's been put together for
British practice, and I'd like to avoid any 'cross-cultural' pitfalls
there may be in bringing it across the Atlantic.
I need some pointers on the way construction layout ("setting-
out" in Brit. English) gets done in North America, and particularly as
to how methods and working practises differ from British procedures.
Any comments would be helpful, especially from anybody with experience
of working both sides of the water, in UK / Ireland and US / Canada. In
particular:
What's my competition - what software packages are normally used
by layout technicians / engineers / surveyors?
Are total stations universal, or are transit-and-tape rigs still
used for smaller jobs, as they are here?
Who actually does the nitty-gritty layout work - foremen,
engineers, technicians, surveyors? Are they normally on the payroll, or
self-employed?
Are local / state regulations or licensing requirements liable
to trip me up?
Any Australians, New Zealanders, South Africans, Europeans (or
anybody else) got any input / opinions on how it's done in your part of
the world?
For HP fans: I appreciate that HP is probably more widely used
in the States than TI gear, but I've gone for TI as their gear is far
cheaper and easier to find this side of the Atlantic. I'll be starting
work shortly on an HP version (which I hope will allow total station
connectibility - not an option with TI), and I'll also be looking at
Psion gear in the longer term.
I'm also developing procedures for downloading coordinate data
from AutoCAD drawings (LT and R12) - the idea is to get a fully-
integrated, standardised site layout package. Hopefully, PC with CAD +
handheld + total station = efficient data-handling and layout.
Beta-testers (on TI-83 or TI-85) welcome - e-mail me.
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Stuart Dawson Dawson Engineering
sd@dawson-eng.demon.co.uk
Belfast, Northern Ireland +44 1232 640669
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Turnpike evaluation. For information, see http://www.turnpike.com/
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