released September 2009
The new TPC Desktop now supports docking views, tabs,
a navigation toolbar, application skins and lots more.
TPC Desktop 2010 introduces what we call Managers. The old Survey View has now become the Traverses Manager. The old Point View has become the Points Manager. This one simple change allowed us to add a new Tasks Manager, Surfaces Manager, Drawings Manager and Drawing Data Manager. What's the benefit to you? They all work the same. So if you learn how to do something in one manager, you can pretty much do that same thing in any other manager. Along with our new docking, tabbing and auto-hiding view, managers provide incredible ease of use.
Once you start using TPC Desktop 2010 you'll see why we call it Obvious Navigation. You'll love the new desktop navigation toolbar, the tabbed views, the simple Tools menu and best of all - you can start using them without even thinking about it.
The desktop includes three toolbars that help with navigating TPC Desktop 2010.
All of your survey file operations are here (affects the entire survey). You can open a new survey, share the current survey, close the current survey, start a new survey... You get the picture. If it involves the survey file, you do it here.
This toolbar opens the views if they aren't already open and brings any open views to the top if they are.
So if you opened a Closure View and can't find it because it's under the drawing, just click the Closure View button and TPC brings it to the top. If you have three Closure Views open, this button toggles between all three views, bringing each one to the top in succession. If you don't have any Closure Views open, it opens the Closure View for the selected traverse in the Traverses Manager. So you get the idea. These buttons help you find what you are looking for.
These buttons open the COGO dialog or bring the dialog to the top of the desktop if it is already open.
The big difference here is that when you open a COGO dialog from a view, TPC initiates the dialog data based on what you have selected in that view. Sometimes this is just what you want. If you don't want this feature, then open the COGO dialog from this toolbar. You'll like this one.
Non-docking views like the Drawing View and Traverse View can be expanded to fill the entire desktop or contracted to 'just fit' the data in the view. This is a great way to arrange multiple views on your desktop.
Each view now has its own embedded menu and toolbars. The managers all use a simple Tools menu along with a customizable toolbar.
In addition to the embedded menus and toolbars, the Drawing View and Traverse Views can each have their own status bar. So move the Drawing View over to your other monitor and everything is right there - menus / toolbars / status bar. And because you can save a layout under any name, you can create one called 'Desktop Dual Monitor' and another one called 'Notebook Only'. You get the point. You can work in the office or in the field and have everything laid out just the way you want. See Using Multiple Monitors.
There's a new Desktop dialog where you can change the skins (look), layout, tabs, fonts and more.
The new Drawings Manager lists the drawings in your survey just like the Traverses Manager lists the traverses. So go ahead and double-click a drawing to open it in the Drawing View, duplicate an existing drawing or add a new one - it's all here in the Drawings Manager.
The Drawings Manager lets you group your drawings just like you group your traverses in the Traverses Manager. Create drawing groups for As-Builts, Preliminary Drawings, Recorded Drawings, etc.
The Drawings Manager can also display the page size and printer for each drawing. Sort the drawings based on their drawing size to help identify the drawing you are looking for.
This is a whole new way of seeing what's in a drawing. The Drawing Data Manager lists everything about a drawing in a familiar tree structure. So go ahead and expand the layers, then expand an individual layer to see what data is on it. Want to turn a layer off? Just untag it. Pretty simple.
The new Surfaces Manager lists all the surfaces in a your survey with tags just like traverses. Want to include a surface in the current drawing? Just tag it in the Surfaces Manager. Or how about using the unique surface settings to draw a surface one way in the current drawing and another way in another drawing. And because surfaces work just like traverses, you already know how to add a new surface or delete an old one.
The Survey View is out and the Traverses Manager is in. It works just like the other mangers, so you can dock it to the desktop, autohide it, tab it with other mangaers - the works.
It also includes some neat new commands like the Close All Open Traverse Views that closes all Traverse, Closure and Vertical Curve views you may have opened.
The Traverses Manager lets you select more than one traverse for operations like COGO | Offset to Alignment and COGO | Right of way Offsets. Try some of these out and you'll find you can do more with a single command using the Traverses Manager.
The Traverses Manager also lets you open the Closure and Vertical Curve views directly for any traverse. You don't have to open the Traverse View then open the Closure View like in previous versions (this option is still available however).
In addition to having a unique name, these survey items can now also have a description.
Keep your traverse names short so you can use them as lot labels then put more information about the traverse in the description. TPC does this when it imports a file from a data collector. The filename alone becomes the traverse name and the full path for the file goes into the description.
Right click any traverse or drawing in their managers and choose Properties. You'll see everything you need to know about that item. Traverses also include their closure information.
Both the Traverses Manager and the Traverse View include the Remove Selected Items from Survey command. This command completely removes the referenced points from the survey by searching each traverse, drawing and surface where the point is used. Of course, this is a dangerous command because once the points are gone, they are gone. So TPC warns you before executing the command.
You can now specify a shared survey folder for your surveys in the Survey Data dialog. TPC makes this folder available in the Tasks Manager so you can go directly to your surveys or your shared surveys. This makes working on a network a breeze. If you are working in Windows Vista or later, this folder is included in the Favorites section of the file Open dialog along with the folders for your surveys and the sample surveys.
You can now specify a shared program folder in the Program Data dialog. TPC uses this folder to reconcile blocks and images that you include in your drawings.
You can now clip / unclip any drawing layer to the clip object you created for the drawing.
We've made temporary drawings much, much easier to use. There's a button on the Traverse View toolbar that says Draw this traverse only. Toggle it on and off to view the temporary traverse drawing or the current (shared) drawing. You'll love this one.
The new a href="cogo_what.htm">What list isn't limited to just COGO dialogs, but that's where you'll use it the most.
We've added COGO pick buttons [>] for everything. Like elevations, distances and offsets. Pick a line label to recall a distance into a dialog. Or pick the end of a line to retrieve its elevation. And you'll really love the new Both [&gDon't want the coutour lines to extend all the way to the border? Want to draw in a line break to the reference monument? Want to show just a part of the adjacent lots? These are all great reasons to clip the survey space of a drawing. An now that TPC 2010 allows you to control clipping by layer, you'll find even more uses for it.
All the COGO routines now include an Undo button. And the best part of all is that it undoes everything. If the COGO routine created 100 points and 2 traverses, the Undo Compute completely removes 100 points and 2 traverses from your survey. No more cleaning up after yourself if you didn't get what you wanted. And go ahead, leave the COGO dialogs open while you check out the computations. Or close the COGO dialog and open it up later - right where you left off - then do the Undo if you want. If you've modified an existing point in a COGO routine then saved it, the Undo Save restores the original position of that point.
We added lots of synchronization with the new COGO dialogs. So recompute the position of an existing point in a COGO routine and watch the drawing show the new position for that points - and update the area of the lot that changed - and update the distance and direction of the lines the reference that point - and update that point in the Points Manager and any open traverses - and any other dialogs that are using that point. Get the picture? It's all sychronized now.
The R-O-W Offset dialog now includes options for Inside and Outside along with Right and Left plus you can create offsets as both side shots and traverses which means you can update the original alignment and everything updates automatically.
Many of the COGO routines like R-O-W Offset, Offset to Alignment, Stations, Corner Offsets and Offset Intervals can now do multiple traverses with one command. Just select the traverses you want in the Traverses Manager.
Alignment traverses can now include a short ray from the PC, PT, SC (spiral to curve) and CS (curve to spiral) to the radius point of the curve or spiral. This is a great way to verify that your curve is going the right direction. See Curve / Spiral settings dialog.
We cover tabbed views in the Learning Guide. Find out how you can tab your Drawing View, Traverse Views, Closure Views and others to help you organize your desktop.
TPC Desktop 2010 includes a grided printout for all list views (Traverse View, Points Manager, etc) that includes column headers on each page and word wraps all the text inside each cell.
TPC Desktop 2010 changes some fils support and how they work.
Sharing a survey is really easy in TPC Desktop 2010. Just choose File | Share Survey As.... By default, TPC creates a new survey file by appending 'Shared' to your current filename. So Job1.trv becomes Job1 - Shared.trv. This makes it easy to identify which files you shared and keeps them separate from your own surveys.
TPC Desktop 2010 includes support through AutoCAD 2009 and will ship with support for AutoCAD 2010 as soon as it is available for Open Alliance.
TPC Desktop 2010 includes the latest DGN libraries from Open Alliance allowing it to do a better job of reading DGN files. At release time, TPC Desktop 2010 does not write a DGN file. This capability will be included in a maintenance release as soon as it is available.
TPC Desktop 2010 exposes more options you can use to specify the resolution of EMF and WMF files. This allows TPC to write larger meta files.
The Survey Report now inludes the number of surfaces and drawings in the survey. If drawings reference images (pictures), they are listed with their full path and filename under each drawing. You can use this to determine which picture files need to be copied with the survey file.
When writing a survey file, TPC now provides additional warnings if it was not able to write all the points, traverses, surfaces or drawings. This may indicate a disk or network error. The warning allows you to resave to another location.