Importing GPS Data into Archicad

[Anonymous]

I will be working on a project in a remote location and I am assuming I will have limited survey information. Before traveling to the site I will have a GPS unit loaded with any mapping (GIS layers) available and I am researching the possibility of importing data from the GPS unit into Archicad. Has anyone had experience with this? Are there recommended file formats I should target. Thank you for any help and advice in this arena.

[Anonymous]

Hi Mike,

I presume the GPS system would be able to output a text file that lists the xyz co-ordinates of all the points. If you had access to ArchiCAD 14 you could use the Surveyors data import feature to automatically create a mesh, then save it back to AC13 format. The data from the GPS may be in a .CSV format so you may need to convert to a .TXT file using a spreadsheet e.g. Excel.

I don't really know a good way to get the 3D data straight in to AC13, other than importing a dwg plan of the site and redrawing it using the mesh tool and adding all the levels individually by hand!

[Anonymous]

There's also Architerra. It's been a couple of years since I last used it to import 3D DWG data but it worked quite well even with a large dataset. The only problem I had was the complexity of the mesh which I managed by slicing it up a bit after import (as I recall).

[Anonymous]

I have stumbled on a few posts about importing GIS layers into sketchup and then using the sketchup plug in to bring it into Archicad. My recollection of when I was bringing complex sketchup info into Archicad is that it crippled archicad, but that was a number of years ago. Perhaps this is an option to pursue, but my knowledge is limited in sketchup.

[Anonymous]

I am also wondering if I can get the data as a dxf file if I can import it as a library part. I have some resources who might be able to get the data into different formats. Just trying to brainstorm the possibilities.

[Anonymous]

This thread on converting a 3d dwg survey into a mesh using AC14 may also be of interest to you -

http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?p=183376

[Anonymous]

Peter wrote:
Hi Mike,

I presume the GPS system would be able to output a text file that lists the xyz co-ordinates of all the points. If you had access to ArchiCAD 14 you could use the Surveyors data import feature to automatically create a mesh, then save it back to AC13 format. The data from the GPS may be in a .CSV format so you may need to convert to a .TXT file using a spreadsheet e.g. Excel.

I don't really know a good way to get the 3D data straight in to AC13, other than importing a dwg plan of the site and redrawing it using the mesh tool and adding all the levels individually by hand!

I have a CSV file from my surveyor. When I convert it to a .txt and try to use it in AC14, I get a "The selected file is not a .txt file" error message.

Does anyone have experience with this problem? Is there a specific method to convert the data?

[Anonymous]

Open the .csv file with NOTEPAD.EXE (it is included in Windows), check that there are spaces between x, y and z values of all points. Then SAVE as .txt!
See my example:

pt x y z

01 394999.678 105313.996 155.03
02 394999.206 105314.279 155.02
03 394998.510 105317.105 155.02
04 394997.955 105319.583 155.03
05 394997.535 105322.713 155.08
06 394997.552 105328.708 155.10
07 394997.900 105334.229 155.14
08 395002.409 105334.940 155.22
09 395002.662 105333.241 155.24
10 395003.367 105331.447 155.25