Hello All,We have a project where we want to be able to monitor a grading plan in-progress as the ground develops to finished levels (i.e., take periodic sample calculations of how much dirt has been laid out onto the project site). Any recommendations as far as a survey grade GPS system or tool(s) to measure/calculate soil grade, with a vertical tolerance of less than 5 feet?Just a note though - we would be performing our work in Korea, not sure what sort of anomalies we would run into with equipment performance in that country?Thanks!

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  • any trimble even a l1 is good in kinematic mode cheaper and easy
  • Thanks Chris, I'm still trying to gather exactly "what" they are going to do with this whole thing but will let you know how it goes. :) I get so confused sometimes with all the different technologies out there.
  • Aloha! Thanks for responding to my question. I hate to admit that I know bo-diddley about surveying. Hehehe! I'm still a GIS newbie as well. From what I gather, basically they need to monitor the dirt fill progress by comparing the grade or elevation of the ground surface from time to time. Another thing they want to do is be able to compare actual location of say, a particular manhole or waterline vs. what they have on an old paper map. Not sure if there is an all-in-one solution for this?

    P.S. The send message function on this site doesn't seem to be working?
    • Land Surveyor
      It still sounds like you need a GPS or even a robotic total station

      If your site is large then a GPS would be most suitable because of the range that you can acheive without continual Intsrument set-ups.

      If, however, you were to be working a smaller site then the Total Station would be fine.

      I dont think the laser scanners can set-out a particular point ( the manholes that you refered to,) , but I could be mistaken on that.

      Let me know how you go.

      Darren
      Noble Consulting Surveyors
  • GEO Ambassador
    First, is it going to be connected with any sort of machine control system? Second is are you going to have internet capabilities? Let me know about these questions and I can help get some information to you either way. Also, I have a friend in Korea who works in network monitoring....i think he may be able to you help as well..
  • Thanks Darren, I think I've been looking at the wrong type of unit then for the job? At the moment I had been looking at either the Trimble GX 3D Scanner or the Leica HDS6000. Are you familiar with these tools?
    • I have not used the Trimble scanner, though I've heard it's comparison to the Leica HDS5000 that I'm familiar with. The Lieca scanner is very expensive, but if you do a lot of quantity survey's, it will make its money back once you learn the Cyclone software. The point clouds are awesome, the machine is fast (you set the precision which sets the speed of course). The company I worked for previously scanned Universal Studios Orlando and Tokyo with it and created phenomenal results. It's also been to Peurto Rico docks and has also done simple dirt stockpile quantities that take quantity accuracies to the 3rd of a yard or better.

      But most don't need that much technology for quantities, it would depend mostly on what accuracies you were looking at, as well as speed. Terramodel with a GPS base and rover, an S6 robot, or 5600 robot even, combined with Survey Controller make for an awesome team for quantities. It doesn't even need to be Survey Controller, just something that can save point files as ASCII, CSV, or TXT. Bring in the points, create a surface from them and compare the 2 surfaces in just minutes of post production work.

      I'm a big Trimble fan, but this is only as far as GPS and Robotics goes, I haven't used their scanner to compare.
  • Land Surveyor
    There are a lot of models that will achieve the accuracies that you require. You would really need to use a RTK system which involves a base station and Roving unit.

    I personally like Trimble units, recently priced a full RTK system at around $60k (AUS) but you can also hire them.

    Other brands which would be just as effective include TopCon & Leica. There are some others but these are the main players as far as I know.

    I hope that this helps.

    Darren
    Noble Consulting Surveyors
    • If you look to the right you will see I just added a video. Its about Trimbles New Access Software. This will show you what you can accomplish. I have been using a fully integrated Trimble S6 Robotic Total station along with the trimble 5800 Rover. I have been using the Trimble TCS2 Data collector with both Survey Pro and Survey Controller. Remember TDS is owned by Trimble since 2000. So Survey Pro from TDS is fully functional on the with Trimble GPS units. It is has a slite learning curve but we are up and running loving it! Have you thought about leasing the equipment http://www.westerndatasystems.com// Speak to Gary Smith tell Gary I ent you. Reddan Surveying & Mapping Inc.
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