In our last meeting Benjamin gave us a short overview of the open source software Survey2GIS provided by the Cultural Heritage Authority of the Federal State of Baden-Württemberg. Survey2GIS allows to import survey data from a total station directly into GIS without having to do a lot of manual work. It resembles TachyCAD in its functionality, but imports into GIS instead of CAD and it only offers post processing. Using codes on the total station allows to import e.g. a polygon data set directly into GIS where it will be represented as a correct polygon as well as offering a variety of attributes.
The software is available on GitHub currently with the stable version 1.5.0 and the 1.5.1Beta which mainly adds more functions of automatic topological corrections.
There is no installation needed, the software runs on Windows, Linux and MacOS, although the latter requires some additional installations. The download folder also contains a detailed user manual in German and English as well as test data.
The key feature of Survey2GIS is the parser file, that can be adapted very precisely to your survey project, including the measurement codes, skipping certain data etc. This allows to tailor the software exactly to your project instead of the other way around.
Although it is aimed at a usual 2D GIS since version 1.5.0 an additional feature allows to import profile data as well. To do this, Survey2GIS switches the Y- and Z-axis. This function is by now offered by other software as well and can also be done by hand in QGIS, but Survey2GIS allows you to do it automatically and does not require recalculations of coordinates by hand or additional fix points. To import profile data, go to "Extra" and switch the default Koordinatesystem "World" to "XZ-Orientation".
If further questions arise, don't hesitate to use the mailing list for them.
