Let’s start with Works Manager - what issues are you guys all having with sending data from TBC to Works Manager for use in Earthworks Machines. Please provide specific details that you know, you are pretty sure or you think you know the answers to. We will see what we can do to assist you here as this has likely been going on a while for most of you.
Object Types Supported by Earthworks
Polygons
Our new EW polygons command should provide the means to create these correctly for Machine Control using Earthworks. The shaded polygons will shade the surfaces in Earthworks for the operator to show different areas / aspects of a project in color on screen.
Alignments
Not sure if Station Equations is still an issue for Earthworks or not. Does anyone know the answer to that question. Are there any other issues that you know of that are causing you problems
Linework
I have heard that some of the VPI types in TBC can cause problems in VCL outputs e.g. Inbound Slope, Outbound Slope, Slope Slope, Vertical Curve and even I have heard VPIs vs 3D nodes. What is the desired solution for linework for Earthworks? What other issues have you encountered.
If you select e.g. Contour Lines, they may be dependent on a surface so you want to break that dependency
Surface Models
Biggest issues I hear are to do with VCLs carrying all the dependent objects of a surface i.e. Source Data. Contours and potentially other surfaces vs supplying “Dumb TIN” models - people tell me that they create a TTM out and then reimport it for Machine Use. Is the desired scenario that you have a create Machine Surface File function, pick one or more surfaces and then just create an MC-XXX where XXX is the source surface name, that has just a TIN Model. We can likely do this in our upcoming Smart Model command and create a Surface Group for Machine / Field Models and then just make a copy of surfaces selected as Machine Models that are just a TBC Internal Surface with no source data or dependent objects.
Coordinate Systems
Is there anything in here to be aware of
Image Files e.g. for Works Manager or Siteworks
Publishing Images with World Files that are below the size threshold for Siteworks in an automated way and prepping the images also for Works Manager / Works OS - is there a preferred format like PNG or JPG or TIF - TIF and PNG have transparency whereas JPG does not - So I would say PNG are the best.
Also if we publish sheets from referenced PDF Pages do you want the whole PDF page probably easier as the publish process needs a plotbox for the area to publish and we could likely create that automatically for each sheet based on the Sheet dimensions that we know at Georeference time.
Any other issues that you know about.
Please capture any other issues that you have seen / heard about so we have a definitive list to work with here and we will see what we can do over the next few months to ease up this bottleneck that does not appear to be getting addressed on the TBC side.
If we solve this, we will likely create a Toolbox of tools for managing data for the field that will not be a part of the All Tools package. This is likely a significant chunk of work for us, that provides little overall value add to what we are trying to do other than supporting you our users better - so we will likely need to charge something additional to recoup the development expenses of these tools. Let me know your opinion of this, the alternative is that All Tools goes up in price if we have to include this element with our standard packaging. If we can slot functions into other tools, the tools are more likely to be in All Tools so we will see where this ends up.
You have a couple of weeks to respond here to us if you want us to do something for you around this,
Please prioritize what you see as the biggest pain points.
Alan