Establishing the station

You must know the total station position and orientation if the total station is to be used for site measurement or stakeout operations where the positions computed are related to a project coordinate system. There are two methods of establishing the position and orientation of the total station:

• Arbitrary locationalso known as free station or resection (see Arbitrary location)

• Setting up on a known point (see Setting up on a known point)

Once the station setup has been established, the total station can be used for measurement or stakeout operations.

If you have not yet established the position of the total station and you select a measurement or stakeout function, the software automatically forces you into the instrument setup process when connected to a total station. If you have not entered any control point data for the site, the station establishment process only allows you to set up at a manually entered coordinate location and orientation of the angle system to 0.000 in a chosen direction. This method is acceptable only if you are measuring a new site that has not been measured before and if you are not trying to measure or stake anything from a loaded design. In most cases, you should have control points available.

You can take angle-only measurements during a station setup, both when the total station is set up on an arbitrary location or on a known control point. Using the angle-only option will not calculate any distance errors in the setup table. When performing an angle-only setup on an arbitrary location, you must shoot a minimum of three control points. Only two control points are necessary in an arbitrary setup when a distance measurement is taken.