Mapping Points from Total Station Data – Use Angle, Horizontal Distance, Vertical Distance in ArcGIS Desktop

arcgis-10.0arcgis-desktopcogoland-surveytopography

I am working on creating a contour map from total station topo points in ArcGIS 10. The points were collected using H angle, HD, VD instead of XYZ points. I need to create points from these measurements with elevations. I have tried using the Bearing Distance to Line Tool and then creating points from the vertices of lines (see https://gis.stackexchange.com/a/31956/18682) but the Bearing Distance To Line Tool does not recognize the angles in my input file (I've tried .csv, excel, and attribute table from feature class created from the excel file). My angles are in Decimal Degrees, which is the default for the tool. What might I be doing wrong? Does anyone have any suggestions for a better method?

Also, I am trying to use COGO to create these points. Can anyone help by explaining how to use COGO in ArcGIS Desktop 10 with a table of Distance and Bearings?

Best Answer

OK- I figured out a fix for this. Susan Jones has a script http://arcscripts.esri.com/details.asp?dbid=16055 that works the way I was hoping the Bearing Distance to Line tool would work.

The output from the script were lines radiating at varying angles and distances from my base coordinate (datum). enter image description here

Then I used Feature Vertices to Point to add an X,Y point at each line's endpoint. This worked because no lines intersect and points were only plotted at endpoints. enter image description here

Then, in excel, I manually calculated the elevation based on the elevation from the base coordinate (datum), the total station and prism heights, and the vertical angle of the bearing. To incorporate this data into my point feature class, I created a new excel spreadsheet, pasted the output X and Y values in, and the calculated elevations. I added this back to ArcMap, displayed XY coordinates and exported the data. Now I have XYZ data that I can create a surface from.

Related Solutions

[GIS] Creating points based on distance and bearing from survey point using QGIS

It is pure trigonometry or vector calculus problem and you can get the result using polar coordinates (center of the figure) or the direction cosines (right) with 2D cartesian coordinates :

enter image description here

import math
point = (-1004.00, 635.00)
distance = 160
bearing =  103
angle =     90 - bearing
bearing = math.radians(bearing)
angle =   math.radians(angle)

# polar coordinates

dist_x, dist_y = \
    (distance * math.cos(angle), distance * math.sin(angle))
print dist_x, dist_y
#(155.89921036563763, -35.992168695018407)
xfinal, yfinal = (point[0] + dist_x, point[1] + dist_y)
print xfinal, yfinal
#(-848.1007896343624, 599.00783130498155)

# direction cosines

cosa = math.cos(angle)
cosb = math.cos(bearing)
xfinal, yfinal = \
    (point[0] +(distance * cosa), point[1]+(distance * cosb))
print xfinal, yfinal
#(-848.1007896343624, 599.00783130498155)

Result

enter image description here

[GIS] Drawing polygons from legal descriptions using bearing directions in ArcMap

Likely, you'll need to change the angular units setting for editing, as found here. enter image description here

Now, you can use the traverse window as such:

enter image description here

If you look here, you'll see there is shorthand for entering bearing and distances, so S01.4146W becomes 01.4146-3 where the -# corresponds to the quadrant, with the quadrants being defined as (1=NE 2=SE 3=SW 4=NW)

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[GIS] Creating points based on distance and bearing from survey point using QGIS

[GIS] Drawing polygons from legal descriptions using bearing directions in ArcMap

Related Question