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Floor plan survey is made easier than before facilitating a PDA

By: Adam Korbuly

OrthoGraph running on a HP iPAQ 214 PDA

OrthoGraph unveiled a new innovative software that enables users to create floor plan surveys on site using a windows mobile personal data assistant (PDA). It facilitates instant digital floor plan sketching and creation of AutoCAD compatible drawings on-site.



A new building survey software was announced to the market with an innovative approach to support appraisers, insurance inspectors, architects, real-estate agencies, flooring installers and anyone who needs digitized drawing and to calculate the area and perimeter of a floor plan even on-site. The OrthoGraph Architect software supports professional building surveys, incorporating floor plan using a mobile personal data assistant (PDA).



OrthoGraph Graphical View on PDA
Using this software the measurements are produced in electronic format right on the spot, while using all possible data-entry equipments and providing automatic control on the values. The system handles the drawing data rapidly, and can handle laser distance meters or barcode readers.



OrthoGraph Hierarchical View of Buildings
After specifying the structure of rooms each room (or logical zone) can have its own drawing. This drawing is uniquely created first by sketching in the particular room into the PDA, and then measuring the distances. To keep the sketching process as easy as it is possible the system provides numerous tools like the "Ghost layer" function that allow the user to show and snap to already sketched or measured zones.



In many cases it may be enough to have the rooms only partly measured (the "fast measure" function), but in some cases it is required to have them exactly surveyed. Using the automatic measurement function the software warns the user for each missing measurement one by one and for doing all necessary measurements on site.



Although the automatic measurement is very precise, as mentioned before it is not always required and can mean more work than it is necessary. In those cases (and if the user decides to keep most of the angles as they were drawn) it is worth to do the measurements manually, just selecting the distances with the pencil and entering the measured data the same result can be achieved.

Measured distances can be entered on-screen but the fastest way is to use a laser distance meter. The model Leica Disto A6 is such a measurement device, which is supported by default. By using Bluetooth connection it transfers the measured distances with one single click.

The OrthoGraph graphical measurement process

Joining rooms to each other can be done easily through walls, wall openings, corners or endpoints. The fully measured rooms are acting as fix drawings (called "islands") and after joining them to each other they move together (this is the "floating island" functionality).



Besides measuring the walls, wall openings, doors, windows and furnishings/objects are also supported storing their proper positions and properties.



The drawn floor plan can be exported into 2D or 3D DWG format or scaled PDF print outs besides many other formats like .xls, .txt, .xml.




OrthoGraph print-out sample


The benefit of using OrthoGraph is to collect graphical and alphanumeric data on-site with ease, where the software helps controlling and display all measurements. There is no more forgotten measurement, or invalid data, everything is shown on the spot, where the data is entered.



For a short video showing the graphical functionality of OrthoGraph visit YouTube on the following address:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-v-6eoptkc&fmt=18

www.orthograph.net

Article Source: http://www.freeliveknowledge.com

Adam Korbuly as Msc. of Electrical Engineering is a CAD and CAFM software technology specialist, and partner in OrthoGraph Ltd. He worked for Graphisoft (producer of the 3D BIM modeling system ArchiCAD and the former producer of the ArchiFM CAFM system) for 8 years in several positions starting as a software developer and landing as a member of top management.

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