Sub-Arctic Surveys Uses FieldGenius XG and Robust Allegros in an Extreme Environment

Kevin Burrill of Sub-Arctic Surveys Ltd. in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada, has an interesting job, and he loves it. Although the population of this northern town is just 20,000, Sub-Arctic employs up to 25 surveyors in the summer and the work varies from building layouts in town to surveying mineral claims through grizzly territory on the tundra.

"Right now the flies are pretty bad," says Kevin and for eight months of the year he's working in sub-zero temperatures. Survey work outside of town almost invariably calls for a helicopter or floatplane ride and drop off at a remote exploration camp for weeks at a time. That's just the start of the adventure as Kevin then sets off with 75 pounds of survey and survival gear in search of ground staked by prospectors.

For working in these remote areas, Sub-Arctic chooses FieldGenius XG data collection software on newly purchased, robust Allegros. "With FieldGenius if we have GPS problems while we're out there we can easily switch over to conventional survey techniques by unplugging the Allegro from the GPS unit and plugging it into a total station. This allows us to carry one set of data and smoothly transition between GPS and conventional survey environments."

“For both GPS and conventional topos you can’t beat FieldGenius for being able to gather data,” says Kevin. “Without the visual 'CAD environment' you’d have to be very diligent about keeping track of your points and point numbers. With FieldGenius you can concentrate on the survey knowing the point management and linework is taken care of. It makes field work that much more efficient, and the transition from field to office is automatic. Uncertainties in post processing the surveys is eliminated. All the linework is there with the download to MSCAD back at the office. ”

FieldGenius XG also quickly yielded returns for this company in an unexpected area. Because the students that Sub-Arctic hires in the summer are accustomed to a Windows based interface, their transition to FieldGenius was easy. The company connected FieldGenius in to their older total stations and "within an hour the students were up to speed on the basics and returning from the field with good, reliable survey data," says Kevin.

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Tip of the Month

Check out MSCAD 2002 Service Packs for Several New Features

If you are a MSCAD 2002 user, we hope you regularly visit the support area of the MicroSurvey website, to acquire some of the free updates that regularly appear. Not only do the free updates to MSCAD 2002 make it possible to process data for FieldGenius XG 2.0, but there are several new commands.

The new commands in Service Pack #4 include:
1. Extracting LWPolylines as either data or breaklines for surface modelling. If you receive a drawing from another program that used LWPolylines to draw some 3D features, you can now use this data to help define a surface.

2. Independent Point Elevations (IPE) are similar to IPD and IPN.

3. Independent Point Elevations Color (IPEC) brings up a dialog that allows you to pick the color of the text for IPE (similar to IPNC and IPDC).

4. SCALERAW. Some people found it hard to work with our RAW files when scaling to match UTM coordinates or to convert from feet to meters, etc. They didn't like having to use the input toggle, so we built something better. More info >>

5. IPSETTINGS controls all of the options for the IPE, IPN and IPD commands. Allows you to change the font and the way it appears on screen, for each.

6. WRITEXML allows you to export all the points and any alignment info to a LandXML file.

7. IPN, IPD, and IPE can now be viewed in any 3D view. The IP text is flat on the screen and does not follow the 3D plane.

8. In 3D view, you can pick on any Point number, Description, Elevation or Point Node and the Coordinate Point Editor or ADT (depending upon how you are configured) will display. Pick on Normal Text to bring up the text editor. Pick on Line or Arc to bring up CADLines or CADCurves.

Read the full description with screenshots >>