Working in Product Support, we tend to hear some questions over and over (and over and over and over) again. One of my personal favorites is “My survey points aren’t located at the correct coordinates!” The first thing I check is the survey database settings for the distance being used, and most of the time I find that it’s set to International Feet instead of US Feet. This is understandable, as the default is International Feet. The problem is that most of the surveyors in the US use the US foot for recording measurements. The differences are small, but are definitely noticeable. So how can you set the distance to US feet and make that the default? Follow the link to find out how.
When you create a survey database, you can edit the settings for the database. These settings include everything from units to measurement corrections to traverse analysis defaults and error tolerances. There is a good bit of information to set up here, and it’s always best if a user can set it and forget it. The good news is that you can export your survey database settings to an external file by selecting the export button, shown below:
Once exported, this file will have an extension of .SDB_SET. You can then use the import button to import these settings into a survey database in the future, or you can take it one step further and make those settings the default for every survey database that you create.You can do this by selecting the Survey User Settings button on the survey toolspace, shown to the right.
From there, you can edit the survey database defaults and select your external file. Now every survey database you create will have your settings already populated. No more different coordinates!
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