Survey Mark Links
Here you will find a collection of the sites I've found most useful or interesting in my exploration of the topics of benchmark hunting and surveying in general.
Resources and Applications
Data Management
- NGS Geodetic Tookit
- From the archives of Professional Surveyor magazine comes a series of articles describing, in depth, the functions of various tools in the toolkit!
- Part 1: General Overview, April 2003
- Part 2: The On-line Positioning User Service (OPUS), May 2003
- Part 3: LVL_DH, and Tidal and Orthometric Elevations, July 2003
- Part 4: General Geodetic Computations, September 2003
- Part 5: Horizontal Time-Dependent Positioning, November 2003
- Part 6: Geoid Tools, December 2003
- Part 7: Computing State Plane Coordinates, January 2004
- Part 8: The National Geodetic Survey NADCON Tool, February 2004
- Part 9: The National Geodetic Survey VERTCON Tool, March 2004
- DSWIN
- DSWIN allows you to search for, extract, view and print NGS control point datasheets, and to plot selected points on a simple schematic diagram. It was written for use with the datasheet CD-ROM, which NGS no longer sells. However, you can still use the program by downloading onto your hard drive the datasheet archive files for the counties you need.
- DSUPDATE
- DSUPDATE replaces old datasheets with their updated versions so that your whole datasheet file stays current.
- BMGPX
- This simple application converts NGS *.dat files (the same ones you download for use with DSWIN) to *.gpx files. The *.gpx files can then be imported into any of the geocache management programs, such as EasyGPS, GPX Spinner, or Watcher.
- GPSBabel
- GPSBabel converts waypoints, tracks, and routes from one format to another, for use in various tracking and mapping applications. Runs under Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and more.
- G7ToWin
- Small, simple, efficient program for waypoint management.
- Maptech Terrain Navigator
- From Maptech's website: "Regional collections of USGS topo maps and Software for 2-D and 3-D viewing, customizing, printing, and GPS." It covers all my mapping needs, and I use it at least once daily.
- TerraClient
- TerraClient allows the user to overlay topo maps on satellite images. Sliders are provided so the layers can be blended in varying amounts. All information is taken live from Microsoft's TerraServer; for some reason this runs very slowly for me even on cable. Still, it's been valuable at times in order to identify and precisely locate items seen on the satellite photos.
Mapping
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