Surveyor's ordinances vs AC

[Anonymous]

How do you guys key in Surveyors’ ordinances? Well you know they take their bearings due north and zero deg. in AC is by default horizontal. The way I do it is to draw the lengths vertically and then rotate the line by its corresponding bearing. This I find rather laborious and presume there must be some shorter way….probably revolving around the skewed grid and grid switch buttons?! all I want is to punch in the length and angle and get it right in one fell sweep.
Any ideas someone?

[Dave Jochum]

Mengi wrote:
How do you guys key in Surveyors’ ordinances?

The best way I've found is detailed in the Project Framework book. It is, with Preferences|Units set to degrees, minutes, seconds:

1. Click to start your first line.
2. Gesture in the vertical direction and lock with the shift key.
3. Hit "a" on our keyboard, then let go of shift key.
4. Enter survey angle.
5. Enter "-" (minus sign) on keyboard for a clockwise angle (east), nothing for counterclockwise (west).
6. Enter "r" on keyboard, then enter length of line.
7. Hit "Enter" on keyboard.
8. Repeat procedure from end of previously drawn line.

[Anonymous]

Here in the States the surveyors use a curious system of angle measure based on relative bearing which depends on which direction it is measured (i.e. N 22° 33' 11" E is the same angle but opposite direction from S 22° 33' 11" W). Fortunately ArchiCAD includes this an an option for angle measure in the working units so all we have to worry about is making we don't get our site upside down. Not all surveyors indicate the direction of their bearings, so it is possible to get North and South reversed.

It sounds like your surveyors are using something like nautical bearings (clockwise from 0° = North). I haven't tried it but it seems that rotating the grid may be your best bet (I can't call it skewed, it remains square, just the origin and angle change), but I'm not sure you can get the direction of rotation to change to clockwise (assuming you do need to).

You may need to lay out your boundaries (we call them metes and bounds here, don't know what metes are though) counter-clockwise and mirror them once you are done.

Hope this helps.

BTW, where is Azania?

[Anonymous]

Dave:
just tried it and it sure is twice as fast as what i had been doing,i do not have to do the rotation bit any more.Thanks a heap.

Mathew:
will investigate rotating the grid further...still got a hunch that it might be the ultimate solution.and you're right we use the Imperial British surveyors system that they bequethed us years ago.

[BTW, where is Azania?]
Oh,Azania is the over-romanticized name for Africa.I come specifically from Kenya and i figured not too many would point to Kenya on the World map.Nice country it once was,but now lost in the half world of crime,poverty and hopelessness.Even sadder,mainstream commercial nihilism is taking away what we're best known for--our long distance runners,by offering them money to change nationality!
Oops,sorry Djordje....this is not for this forum!

[Daniel Lindahl]

Mengi wrote:
How do you guys key in Surveyors’ ordinances? Well you know they take their bearings due north and zero deg. in AC is by default horizontal. The way I do it is to draw the lengths vertically and then rotate the line by its corresponding bearing. This I find rather laborious and presume there must be some shorter way….probably revolving around the skewed grid and grid switch buttons?! all I want is to punch in the length and angle and get it right in one fell sweep.
Any ideas someone?

Mengi
I have made a SurveyLine+Arc tool which is available at Objects Online. This should help you set up site plans more easily. It can be configured for US as well as metric systems of survey measurements, and has instructions for how to deal with ArchiCADs lamentable limitation of only measuring angles anticlockwise.

The image below shows some of the versatility of this object.

[rm]

Daniel,

That surveying object looks VERY useful!!!!! Can it be configured for any shape of a lot.

Where can I find more info, and is there a demo to try out.

Thanks,
Architects Design Forum, Ltd.


Robert Mariani

[Dave Jochum]

rm wrote:
Daniel,

That surveying object looks VERY useful!!!!! Where can I find more info, and is there a demo to try out.

Does look useful indeed. It's available at Objects Online at http://objectsonline.com/arc/ Enter "survey" in the search box. I've not used it myself, but for only $20 there's no need to worry about a demo. Try it out and let us know what you think.

[Daniel Lindahl]

rm wrote:
Daniel,

That surveying object looks VERY useful!!!!! Can it be configured for any shape of a lot.

Where can I find more info, and is there a demo to try out.

Thanks,
Architects Design Forum, Ltd.


Robert Mariani

Yes, Robert

It can be used for any size lot. You use one object for each boundary line/arc. Check out Objects Online for more information. (But no demos!)

[Anonymous]

OK, but how do you draw a line at, say, 30˚ from the previuos line?

[Daniel Lindahl]

Rip wrote:
OK, but how do you draw a line at, say, 30˚ from the previuos line?

Rip

Easy.

Make a copy of the previouos line. Select the copy, then rotate it the way you normally rotate things in AC, i.e. start the rotation about one end, but instead of clicking the other end of the line to begin the rotation, click horizontally out to your right (Archicad zero degrees) then gesture up or down, type A to activate the angle coordinates box, and type in either 30 or -30. Then enter.

now you can move the line onto the end of the previous one if it isn't there already, change the length of it, and keep on adding lines.