IMPORTING & EXPORTING SURVEY COORDINATES

AllyCAD offers different ways of importing a text file of coordinates into a drawing, and exporting to a text file. This tech-tip explains how they differ and what to expect.

A. Importing survey coordinates

There are three ways of importing survey coordinates. Briefly, they differ as follows:

1. Toolkit > General > Import Coordinates
   The coordinates are imported as CAD entities, a point and text entity for the label are created and optionally a line joining sequential points.
2. Toolkit > General > Import Coord File
   The coordinates are also imported as CAD entities, the elevation can also be drawn as text, and each of the entities can be on different layers. A description for each point can also be included in the file.
3. Toolkit > Survey > COGO points > Import File
   The coordinates are imported as COGO point entities, where the display of the label and the elevation can be switched on or off. COGO points are a bit more featureful than simple text entities. More operations can be done with them.

1. Toolkit > General > Import Coordinates

The file format is expected to be label,y,x,z and can be comma, tab or space delimited. You're asked to choose the file, and given some import options.

On pressing OK a text entity is drawn with the value being the coordinate label, and bottom centre alignment point being at the coordinate. The current layer and text style settings will be used for the entities, though the text height is set on the dialog.

The result is a text entity for each point with insertion point at the point position and with bottom-centre alignment.

2. Toolkit > General > Import Coord File

The file format is expected to be label,y,x,z,description and can be comma, tab or space delimited. The description field is optional.

You're asked to choose the file, and given some import options

The current text style settings will be used for the entities, though the height is set on the dialog. A different CAD layer is possible for each of the parts of the point

The result are separate text entities each with their insertion points at the point position but with different alignments.

3. Toolkit > Survey > COGO points > Import File

The current text style settings will be used for the entities.

The data format and field order is more customisable and will be very familiar to Civil Designer users.

All the parts of the point make up one COGO point entity. The different parts can be switched on and off with the entity properties.

B. Exporting survey coordinates

There are two ways of exporting coordinates to a text file. Briefly, they differ as follows:

1. Toolkit > Survey > COGO points > Export
   One of the operations that can be performed on COGO points is to export them to file.
2. Dimensions > Coordinate Table
   A very versatile feature that enables you to build up a table of points with labels and elevations extracted from the drawing and then export this to file.

Toolkit > Survey > COGO points > Export

Existing COGO points in your drawing can be exported to file. The COGO points will have come from having been created through one of the COGO point operations, like Add Point, Traverse or Tache.

You're simply asked to specify the destination name, and the points are written out in format label,y,x,z,description. This is the same format expected when importing them.

Dimensions > Coordinate Table

The dialog gives you options to specify where the label comes from, which either can be auto-incremented or obtained by clicking on a pre-existing text entity.

By default you get x and y columns, but one extra column say for elevation may be chosen. In this case the value needs to be typed-in each time.

The result is the data in tabular format, and by pressing the Export button you can send the contents to file.

As an aside, another feature of coordinate table is to have the table added as a CAD table entity for inclusion as information in a drawing.