I bought a pair of RS2’s to assist in my engineering and bending of pipe on replacement sections. With the release of ReachView 3, I was able to finally use NTRIP to get state plane coordinates for 3 or 4 points to resect in with my total station to take shots in a proper coordinate system, instead of always starting at 0,0,0.
I set up and use the total station to take precise shots on the pipe to calculate where the bends will fall and used to use it to stake them back out.
When I have time, I use a computer/Dropbox/iCloud to import/export/edit points between the ReachView app and my Spectra Ranger data collector to stake out my calculated bends and ditch lines.
This past week I was in the field and didn’t have time to get back to a computer and I had a lot of new points to stake back out. I found a CSV editor app that easily allows you to open the CSV on my iPhone, added points calculated in the data collector, and then staked them out.
Since I do most of the pipeline engineering myself, the old way with a reflectorless total station (with laser pointer) involved a lot of walking and setting up the total station in multiple locations and sometimes several hours. Last week it took about 10 minutes after I imported the points.
I’ve asked about “stake to line” capabilities in the ReachView 3 app and hoping it gets added in the future. That would be the icing on the cake with my new capabilities.
Thank you so much Emlid for affordably giving me RTK capabilities. As far as I know, I’m the only pipeline bending engineer that has the ability.