tstrickland wrote:I do everything in 3d. There have been a lot of situations when someone later wanted a topo, etc, for the site, or an adjoining site, and it's not much trouble to go ahead and do it.
Another thing I've seen, if you're doing total station work, and say you're set up on pnt 100 and backsite 101, but youre really on 101 and backsiting 100, it will check with 2d, but 3d will usually tell on it unless you're in very level country. I've seen crews do this more than once. It can be fixed, but it's aggravating.
Also if you plan to use control for future gps points you need the z.
There are probably more, but no more trouble than it is especially with rtk, I carry my zees.
I draw mainly with polylines. 3D polys are a pain. In reality all the 3D data is in a 2D drawing without all the problems with polys.
Sure you need to collect data x, y, z, but that really has nothing to do with the drawing. If you are going to use a point for GPS, don't you download that info from the *.crd file? If you think it's necessary to hand key in the x, y, z values then create a F2F setup that labels the x, y, z data for the control points in your drawing on a layer called "control".
You can run your backsight checks with the points on actual z value just fine. When you erase those points, that setting can go away. When you need 3DZ, use it, otherwise points not at actual z value are much easier to deal with and the whole system still functions correctly without any problems. I suppose that is why Carlson made it an option item.