The most affordable entry point into 3D Machine Control: by Randy Noland - It is almost cliche to read an article or news item these days that begins with "In these economic times.... ", but the phrase does capture the mood I have seen in my business travels in the US and abroad. The current economic environment presents challenges to to be profitable which affects our ...

The Bottom Line by Paul Hahn: Specialized Total Stations for Construction Layout, Machine Control and More - In the past decade, manufacturers have made tremendous strides in developing optical total stations specifically designed for the construction industry. In the 1990’s the construction industry was slow to adopt total station technology. Manufacturers attempted to …

It's All About the Data by Marco Cecala: Software Review: InSite SiteWork  - During my recent visit to World of Concrete, I met and talked with Mike Tartaglia and Steve Warfle. It had been a while since I worked with InSite software, and I heard they had made numerous improvements. First let’s cover the basics of the program. InSite does not run in AutoCAD. It can …

Machine Control & the Land Surveyor by Jay Jones, LS: We are not alone - I recently had a conversation with a dentist friend, about our professions. I was quite amazed at the similarities. Not from the standpoint that we do anything similar in our daily work, but from the standpoint that we are both in professions that are rapidly evolving. He teaches seminars and ...

Data Prep: Tips, Tricks & Techniques by Chad Cooper: Highway Data Building – Profiles, got to get them all  - It's funny how the more you build data, the more you do individual steps of building data without even realizing it. It becomes automatic. While this holds true for everything from playing football, to cooking to how to react to contact right, I have found that ...

Machine Guidance Systems by Nigel Adams: Ongrade Training with Carlson Landfill Grade– Recently, I was fortunate enough to attend an installation and training session near the city of Fort Worth, Texas (spending the majority of my time on a landfill site) learning as much as I could about the Carlson Landfill ...

3D Modeling 101: A Bit of History by Ron Ciccarone, LS: – Have you ever wonder when we started connecting points of equal elevation with lines to form what we call contours? I am digressing a bit from the digital 3D Model issue, but I think it is important to see what our predecessors used to depict land. In the late 1600 and early 1700, Edmund Halley use contour type ...