Angular and Distance units.

Although we somehow manage to be able to navigate ships and aircraft from one continent to another using a consistent method of measuring angles and distances, it is unfortunate that Surveyors and Civil Engineers still choose to use different units on different continents, and in different States (of the one supposedly United States for just one example) and if that isn't difficult enough, we find government departments using metres and private practitioners using feet within the one state.

Since Ezicad is aimed at a global market, we have attempted to provide methods whereby you can enter whatever units you choose to work in, for both angles and distances, and display the resulting coordinates with East First, or North first as you see fit.

When you first run Ezicad, even before a job is loaded, you can see on the bottom right of the status bar what units are the current default for inputting data, and for outputting data.

If you look at the portion of the screen shown at right, you will see a series of fields tracking the cursor coordinates, and then a group of 4 fields which show, from left to right, Distance Input Units, Distance Output units, Angular Input Units, Angular Output units.

Ezicad makes the conversion from one system to the other simple by allowing you to input in one unit and plot out the plan with another unit displayed.

These values are set for each job by accessing the Modes- Input screen.

This is achieved by either pressing the F9 function key, or by selecting the icon.

If you then select the Tab titled Modes-Input, the screen shown at right will appear.

Here you can select the angular and distance units you wish to use when you are entering the data, and also the angular and distance units you wish to have displayed and plotted.

Using these selections makes it easy to convert old title plans to newer units, or to simply merge together surveys done in different units.

If you are entering field data from stadia/topo surveys, or traverses into the Data Entry Spreadsheet, you can also select at that point the units you have used in the field.

You will see on the bottom of the Entry Spreadsheet that you can pull down and select the required unit for both angle and distance.

Angles

You will see that you have the options of:

Degrees Entered as DDD.MMSS where D is the degrees, M is the minutes and S is the seconds.
So, 125degrees 15minutes 35seconds would be entered as 125.1535
Grads Here the circle is divided into 400 units instead of 360 with degrees Entered as GGG.ggg
Mills Used mainly by the military - a circle is divided into 6400 units.
Quadrants

A system where the base reference is a quarter of a circle, rather than the whole circle.
Entered as QDD.MMSS:
where Q is the Quadrant - 1 is North East (NE), 2 is South East (SE), 3 is South West (SW), 4 is North West (NW).

Note that the degrees field must be between zero and 90, and any values less than 10 must have a leading zero.
So, North 5 degrees 25 minutes 35 seconds East would be enterd as 105.2535, and
South 55 degrees 38 minutes 44 seconds West would be entered as 355.3844.

 

Note that Ezicad measures all angles based on a North Azimuth.

Distances

The options you have here are;

Metres standard decimal metres entered as MMM.mmm
Feet (decimal feet) feet and hundredths of a foot Entered as FFF.ff  where 1 foot = .3048 metres exactly
Feet & Inches entered as FFF'IIN/D 
where F is the feet, I is the inches , and N& D are the fractions of an inch where N is the Numerator and D is the Denominator, or for those who didn't study math, N is the bit on the top and D is the bit on the bottom. 
So, twenty seven feet six and five eighth inches would be entered as 27'065/8
Links an original 'decimal' system, though now outdated where there were 100 links to a chain. Entered as LLL.ll, and one link is 0.201168 metres
US Survey Feet

Provides a perfect example of why politicians should not be taken too seriously, particularly in matters technical
Ignoring the fact that feet were a British invention and had since the 13th Century been established as the quirky Anglo competitor to the decimal Metre of the French where 3.2808399 feet made up one metre, the US Congress in 1836 decided that they needed a thing to be known as a US Survey Foot which would need 3.2808333 feet to make a metre.
Spanish vara not common but still out there - entered in decimal format VVV.vvv.

Coordinates

There are two schools of thought regarding the correct order for the entry and display of coordinate information.

Some believe that East should be first followed by North - 'X' then 'Y'.

Others prefer to have North first followed by East - 'Y' then 'X'

You can set Ezicad to display them however you like by picking the relevant option for your particular area from the buttons presented at the bottom left corner of the Modes Display screen