CHAPTER 4

Surface Surveying Tools

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Surpac Vision will allow you to use several different database formats, including Microsoft Access.

This chapter will take you through the creation of a surface database, and then show you how to add station information once the database has
been created.

Exercise 1 – Create A Surface Database

This section will take you through creating a surface surveying database.

What you will learn

In this exercise you will cover the following topics:

o Creating a surface surveying database.

o Making use of optional fields

 Creating a Surface Surveying Database

The work for the tutorial will be using all of the files located in the default training folder, which can be installed from the Surpac Vision CD.
This directory will typically have a path similar to that listed below.
C:\ssi_V4.0\dem\training\survey
The file will be located in a zip file called survey.zip. The directory that these files are unzipped to will not affect the tutorials.
1. Right click on the right side of the menu and make sure the Surveying menu is displayed.

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2. From the Surveying menu, select Survey Database > New/Open

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3. Enter a name of "Surface" for the database name.

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The name you choose to give your database is entirely your decision, but it is recommended that you do not have spaces in the name.
If you wish to separate two words in the database name, use an underscore, i.e. my_database.

Surpac will then display a form telling you that it could not find a database called "surface". You then have the option to press Apply
to create a database with this name, or cancel to stop creating the database.
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4. Click on the Apply button to continue creating the surface database.

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The next form that is displayed allows you to select whether the surveying database is to be used for surface or underground
applications, and the type of database that you will be using. There are several options under the database type field, with "paradox"
just being one. Another option would be to use Microsoft Access.
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The advantage of using "paradox" is that you do not need any other software to use the surveying database. If you want to use some
other database types such as Microsoft Access, you must have that piece of software on your computer to be able to use that type of
database for your survey station information.

5. Select "paradox" from the list, and also make sure that the survey type is set to surface, and then click on the Apply button.

The primary difference between a surface surveying database, and an underground surveying database, is use of backsight checks in
processing survey data. The underground database will store, and enforce backsight information, such as the reverse bearing, while the
surface database does not store or use any of these checks.

The next form that is displayed will give you the option of being able to add an optional table to the database. In the case of a
surveying database, the only type of additional table that can be added is called a prism table, which is used for slope stability
monitoring.
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At this stage you will not add an optional table.

6. Apply the optional tables form without making any changes.

The next form is a very large form where all the fields to be used in the database are defined.
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 The form is split into 2 parts.

The top half deals with the mandatory fields, or the fields that must be created for Surpac. The bottom half deals with user created
fields, such as who the surveyor was, when the survey was carried out, and so on.

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The mandatory fields are automatically placed into the form, and given meaningful values. You can alter some of these values if
required, such as the number of characters you can use for the survey station name. In this case you will not make any changes to the
mandatory fields.

For both mandatory and optional fields, there are field parameters that need to be defined. A table is used below to describe what these
field parameters are.

Field This is the field name. The name of a field should not have
 spaces, and in some cases will not be able to use some
reserved words such as "if" or "for".

Type This describes the kind of information that can be entered

into this field, such as character (text), numbers or a date
format.

Nulls If you want to have the option of allowing this field to be left
blank, then the box should be ticked. If you want it so that
information must be entered into this field, then leave the box
un-ticked.

Length This is the length of the field in characters that you are going
to allow to be entered in. It must be large enough to include
the decimal point and decimal places when using a field type
of real.

No Dec This is the number of decimal places to be used for a field

type of real.

Case This is the case of any text that is to be entered into a field.
This is only required if the field type is character. The survey
 database is case sensitive, so a station name of x100 is
different to a station of X100.

Low Bound This is used with a numeric field, and defines the lowest
value that will be accepted by the database in the field.

High Bound This is used with a numeric field, and defines the highest
value that will be accepted by the database in the field.

Phys or Virt This is not used in a surveying database.

Reference This is not used in a surveying database.

Valid Entries This defines if a set input is allowed. If this field is used, only
the sets of entries listed will be allowed by the field. An
example of this would be for a station type,
ie ;PEG;PILLAR;PIN and each valid entry must be preceded
by a semi-colon.
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The optional fields are there to allow you to enter data that may be required on a specific basis, and are useful for providing extra information
that you may wish to extract from your database. An example of this might be when a survey was carried out, or who carried out the survey.
 Enter the optional fields as shown in the previous image, and then click on the Apply button.
The database will now be created. Surpac Vision will notify you of the database being created in the message window, and will also
automatically connect you to the database.

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Surpac will also show you that you are connected to a database, by placing a small icon at the bottom of the screen, with the database name
also shown. This icon will remain at the bottom of the screen until the database is closed.

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Once you have been connected to the surveying database, you will now have access to the various surveying tools within Surpac vision.
As you used a paradox format in this example, several files will have been created in the process of making the surveying database.
The first file that is created, no matter what kind of database type is used, is the *.sdb file. In this case the file will have been called
surface.sdb. This file defines all of the fields and tables in the database for Surpac. It is an ASCII file and can be edited with any text editor,
but should only ever be edited by an experienced user.
The other files that have been created are specific to the database type that was chosen, which in this example was paradox. In the directory
that you are working in, a new folder will have been created called surface.pdx. The start of the folder name will come from the name of the
database that you chose, and the pdx extension for the folder signifies that it is a paradox database.
Within the surface.pdx folder there will be a further 4 files. These files are the paradox tables that have been created by Surpac for you. These
files should NEVER be modified with a text editor.

 
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If in this example you had chosen to use a Microsoft Access database format, the files that would have been created would have been the
surface.sdb file, and a surface.mdb file. To do this however, you would need to have a copy of Microsoft Access as mentioned earlier.
 
Exercise 2 – Data Entry to the Surface Database
This section will take you through entering data into your newly created surface surveying database.
What you will learn
In this exercise you will cover the following topics:
o Manual data entry
o Automatically loading data

 Manually entering surface stations into database

This exercise will take you through entering station information manually into your surface surveying database.
1. Make sure you have the Surveying menu displayed.
2. Make sure you are connected to your surface surveying database.
3. From the surveying menu, select Stations > Insert records
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From the next form, you can control some of the data entry using the template that is displayed.

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 The template values that have been entered will automatically increment the station_id value by one each time you move down a line
on the data entry screen. So if the station_id value is X1, when you moved down to the next line, the station_id would automatically
become X2, and so on.

The area line on the template screen has been given a value of "=". This will automatically place the value for a given field, and copy
it down to the corresponding field each time you move down a line. So if you were to give the area a value of PIT, when you move
down to enter in a new line, the value PIT would automatically be placed into the area field.

Using these tools you can greatly increase the efficiency of your data entry, and also help to eradicate data entry errors.

4. Fill out the template form as shown in the previous image, and then click on Apply.

The next form you will see is the data entry form.
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5. Enter the first line as shown.

 Moving down to the next line can be done in several ways. The first is to use the TAB key to move from field to field, which will then
move you down to the next line.

The next method is to position the mouse pointer in any part of the grey area in the data entry table and then click with the right hand
button on the mouse. This will give you two options, to ADD a row, and to select a set number of rows.

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6. Using one of the options, move down to the next line and continue the data entry.

Note – If you use the ENTER key, it is that same as clicking on the APPLY button.

7. Fill out the remaining lines as shown on the following image and then click on Apply once you are happy that the data has been
entered correctly.
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If you have added an extra line and wish to remove it from the table, you can right click on the line number on the left hand side of the form
and select the REMOVE option.
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Once you have applied the form, the message window will inform you of how many rows, or records have been added to your database.
This method of adding stations to your database, is fine if you only have a small amount of stations to add, but if you had many records to
enter into the database, this method would be slow, and can be prone to human error.
A better way to place your station information into the database would be to automatically load the data from a digital file into the database.
 
 Automatically loading station information
This exercise will take you through the tools that will allow you to automatically load digital data into your surface surveying database.
To be able to do this, you must have your survey station information in a digital format, such as in a spreadsheet, or text file, or in another
database. This example will work on taking station information from a spreadsheet CSV file, and placing it into the surveying database.
First you will view the station information that will be loaded into the database in a text editor.
1. Find the "surface.csv" file on the file manger in Surpac Vision.
2. Right hand click on the file with your mouse, and select the EDIT option

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 This will open up the surface.csv file with your default text editor. You can use any text editor you wish, which you can set in the
Surpac Default Preferences under the Customise menu.

The text file should look something like the following image.

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There are a few things that are important to take note of in this text file.

The first thing is the format of the file. Each piece of information is separated by a character, in this case a comma "," . Using the
comma, we can now say that each piece of information is in it’s own column, so the station_id is in column 1, and the y is in column
2, and so on.

Another important thing to look at is the order of the information in the file. The database that you have created has the fields in a set
order, and when we load the data into the database, we must tell Surpac what goes where. The order of the information in the text file
is not the same as that of the database, which we will deal with shortly.

Another good way to view a CSV file, is to open it with a spreadsheet, such as with Microsoft Excel.

3. After you have finished viewing the surface.csv file, close the text editor.

Now you can load the data into you surface database.
4. From the Surveying menu, select Survey Database > Import Data

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The next form will prompt you for the name of a format file for loading the data into the database. As yet, this file does not exist, so
you must create it. By default, Surpac will place the name of the database into this form.

The format file is used to describe the type of data that you are going to load into the database, such as if the file has any characters
separating each column of information, and also the order of the information.

The name of the file can be anything you wish, but do not use spaces for the name.

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5. Enter format file name as shown in the previous image, and the click on the Apply button.

Surpac will not be able to find this file, and will produce a form asking you if you wish to create this file.

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6. Apply the form to create the format file.

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 The next form is where you select the tables in the database that you are going to load information in to, and also the type of text file
that is being used.

In this example there is only a single table, which is your stations table.

The format of the file is free format, as each piece of information in the surface.csv file, is separated by a character, in your case a
comma. Make sure that the correct delimiter is used.

The space fill field is not used in loading data into a table.

In some text files, there may be the case where text information is highlighted using some character set, such as double quotes. In this
example there is no text qualifying characters set so it can be left as none.

7. Apply the form with the values set as shown in the previous image.

The next form is used to tell Surpac what order the data in the text file is stored. This is very important, as if the incorrect data is
loaded into a field it will either lead to errors in the loading process, or the database will then have incorrect information in the various
fields.
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Notice the order of the columns in the form. This is telling Surpac, when loading data using this format file, that it is going to get the
information from column 8 in the text file, and place it into the station_type field in the database.

8. Fill out the form as shown in the previous image, making sure the order of the columns is correct, and the click on the Apply button.
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The final form in the loading process is where you tell Surpac which text file contains the information. It is also where you select the
number of errors that will be allowed, and the loading type to be used.

An error will occur if an action takes place that breaks the rules you have previously set up in defining the database, and of selecting
which columns are to be loaded to which field in the database. If you were to try and load a piece of text into a numerical field in the
database, you would get an error. This is just one example of some of the errors you can get.
 When you apply the form to load the data, you will get 1 error from the text file. This will come from the top line in the text file,
which contained the column headings in the surface.csv file. A report after the loading process will tell you about this error.

The loading type controls whether you are adding new information or updating information that is already in the database. Insert is
used if you are adding new records into the database, and update is used for records that are already in the database. The maximum
errors allowed is a way of stopping a load if there are many errors, and should always be set to a number relative to the number of
records being loaded.

9. Fill out the form as shown in the previous image, and then click on the Apply button.

Once the loading has been completed, a report will be generated, informing you of the status of the completed load.
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In this case, the report should tell you that 5 records were added to the database, and that 1 record was rejected.

The record that was rejected you knew about before the load. It was the header line of the text file, and failed for several reasons. The
first being that the station_id field in the database will only accept upper case characters.
 When a record, or series of records are rejected, a new file is created containing these records. This file is given the same name as the
database, with the extension *.rej. So in this example, you should now have a file in your current working directory called surface.rej.
This file can be edited with a text editor, renamed, and then used to try and load the data to the database once the problems have been
fixed.

10. Once you have viewed the log file, you can close it.

The format file that was created is also kept for future use. This file uses the name you chose for it with the extension of *.dsc. So this
file will also be in your current working directory called load_surface.dsc. This file can be used again if you have a text file in the
same format as was just used, and it means that you do not have to create a new format file each time you want to load data.

The database will now have a total of nine stations in it. Four of the stations you entered manually, and five you loaded automatically.

11. From the Surveying menu, select Stations > View table

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 12. Apply the select table form without making any changes

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All of the stations that are currently in the surface database will be displayed.
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 Surface traversing
The final method that you will cover for inserting station information into your surface surveying database, is to use the traversing function.
In this way, using the field observations, you can have Surpac calculate your station coordinates, and place them automatically into your
station database.
1. From the Surveying menu, select Surface surveys > Surface traverse

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The next form is where you give the traverse function some basic information that will be placed onto the final traverse report. It is
also where you give the traverse report a file name, and this report will be created in a Surpac *.not format.

2. Fill out the form as shown in the following image and then click on the Apply button.
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The traverse form is a large form, and is broken into smaller parts with the use of tabs at the top of the form. The first step is to tell
Surpac which stations are going to be used in the traverse, and also that you must give the new survey station a name.
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For the traversing functions in Surpac to work, you must already have the backsight and set up stations as records in you database. If
this is not the case, you must enter them before you can continue.

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For this traverse, the backsight station will be P100, and the set up station will be P101. Both of these stations are already in the station
database, and as a result of this, when you enter their names into the station name fields, the coordinate information for them will be
automatically placed into the form.

The foresight, or new station, will be P104. At this stage, you must also provide an instrument set up height, and a target set up height.

The instrument, and target set up heights are always recorded from the station to the reference point. In general, for a surface station
this will result in the distance being a positive value. In the case of an underground survey station where generally you would be set up
under the station, the value would be negative.

Station P101 is a pillar, and as such the instrument height is very small, in fact the distance from the bottom of the instrument to the
reference point on the instrument.

Fill out the reference information for the set up stations, and then move to the horizontal angle tab on the form.
There are two methods you can use for entering the horizontal angles, reiteration, and repetition.

The reiteration method is where horizontal angles are observed when using a theodolite which permits both the upper and lower plates
to be clamped. An example of this kind of instrument is most modern electronic theodolite, where generally there is only a single
plate.

The method involves setting up on a single point O, and then measuring an angle from point A to point E, and then repeating this
several times to obtain an average for an angle.

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The repetition method is where a single angle is measured several times, such as measuring from the backsight to the foresight n
times, and then having the sum of the angles as x. The average is then determined by calculating the average of x / n. The use of this
method of observing horizontal angles is performed when the theodolite does not permit clamping of the horizontal plate of the
theodolite. An example of the kind of instrument used in this method is the Wild T2.

In this example you will use the reiteration method to enter the observed horizontal angles.
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3. Enter the angles as shown in the previous image.

The angles have been turned using the face left and face right principle. This is where an angle is turned from the backsight to the
foresight with the vertical scale of the theodolite on the left hand side of the instrument as you look through the telescope. Once this
angle has been recorded, the telescope is flipped over, and an angle recorded with the vertical scale on the right hand side of the
instrument. This will give 2 angles, which can then be averaged.

4. Once the angles have been entered, click on the Mean reiteration angle button to calculate the average horizontal angle.

It is important to make sure that there are not any extra lines in the angle table, as these will be included in the average. If this has
happened, click on the line number with the right hand mouse button, and remove the line.

Once the horizontal angles have been calculated, you can now click on the Vertical angles tab.
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5. Enter in the observed vertical angles, and then click on the Mean forward angle button.

This will then calculate the mean vertical angle.

6. Enter in the observed slope distance.

All of the observed values have now been entered into the surface traversing form.

7. If all of the entered information is correct, click on the Calculate coordinates button at the bottom of the form.
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Surpac will now calculate the coordinates of the new survey station, and the values will be placed at the top of the form for viewing,
before advancing any further.

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8. If you are happy with these results, you can now click on the Apply button.
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The next form is the information that is going to be added to the database automatically. Only the mandatory fields will have any
information filled out automatically. If you wish to alter, or add any information here you can do so.
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9. Fill out the optional fields as shown in the previous image, and then click on the Apply button.

This information will then be added to the surface surveying database. The traversing function will also automatically step to the next
traverse leg. If there are no further legs in this traverse, click on the cancel button.
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If there are, it is just a matter of continuing on, as with the previous exercise.

10. Click on the cancel button when the traversing form is displayed again.

Once you click on the cancel button, Surpac will produce a *.not file, with the name that you selected at the beginning of the traversing
exercise. This report will give you a summary of all of the inputs that you entered, and the resultant information also displayed on the report.
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This report can then be printed out for your records if required.
What you have covered
This chapter has covered the creation of a surface surveying database and then adding records to that database using several methods. You
should now be familiar with the following topics
o Surface surveying database creation
o Manual data entry
o Automated data loading
o Surface traversing

If you are unsure about any of the above topics you can review these topics at any stage.
Where to next
The next chapter will take you through much the same exercises but as they apply to the underground surveying database.