Creating a Traverse for Adjustment

So your survey crew went out and located data and you want to adjust their traverse. The problem is, they didn’t define a traverse in the data collector, so the traverse does not show up in the survey database. In this post, I am going to show you how to manually enter this information so that you can adjust your traverse.

First, from the screenshot here, you can see that we have an extremely simple traverse. My initial setup was on point 1 with a backsight to point 2 and a foresight to point 3. From there, I had a setup on point 3, backsight point 1, and a foresight to point 4. My crews were nice enough to write down the angle and distance to point 2 and then my closing angle and distance to point 1, but these shots were not recorded in the data collector. So what’s a guy to do?

First, I’m going to create my traverse. I will do this by expanding the network tree, right click Traverses, and selecting New… At that point, I will fill in the information – my initial station (1,) initial backsight (2,) stations (3,4,2,) and then my final foresight (1.)

 

Now, I am going to attempt to adjust this traverse – it’s created, right? Well, if it were a well-defined traverse, then I wouldn’t be getting this error:

 

Why do I get this error? Simple – it’s not a closed traverse. For a traverse to be closed, you have to have the all-important closing angle in the traverse definition. But, as I said, this wasn’t recorded in the FBK file. What I will have to do is edit the traverse. To do this, simply right click the traverse and select Edit.

Editing the traverse brings up the Traverse Editor Panorama. A first glance at the traverse editor shows that there are observations recorded for most everything until we get to Station 4, which appears to be empty. It is in these blanks that I will have to manually enter some data – my angle and distance back to point 2 for starters. The process is as easy as filling in a spreadsheet – just put the appropriate data in the appropriate blanks, and the traverse is edited!

Once I am done, I can click the disk to save the traverse and then the green check to dismiss the panorama.

Evidence of a closed traverse can be found once the analysis is run again – it actually works this time!

Angular error      = 0-00-02
Angular error/set  = 0-00-00 Over
Elevation error : 0.0000
Error North     : 0.0048
Error East      : -0.0250
Absolute error  : 0.0255
Error Direction : N 79-01-24 W
Perimeter       : 600.0250
Precision       : 1 in 23561.8870

Happy Surveying!