Plan generation – project update

The high level design proposal for the 'Offline Plan Generation with Diagram Creation' option has now been completed. This has involved a significant amount of work to identify candidate solutions and eliminate those that would be too expensive, too cumbersome, or unnecessarily complex.

The assessment of which toolkit and development software will be used to build the application is also near completion.

The following diagram provides an overview of how plan generation data will be communicated between the online and offline systems.

The 'PlanGen package' shown in the middle of the diagram is conceptually similar to a zip archive, Word document or any other self contained file. Once generated, it may be moved to and from Landonline and around a user's local file system at their convenience.

Key features

Other key features proposed by the high level design are the ability for a user to:

• increase or decrease the extract area before taking the plan offline
• either directly import or export a package, or alternatively
• import/export via a disconnected process – this option will prove beneficial for larger plans where a user may not wish to wait for the process to complete before logging off or moving on to another Landonline task
• receive updates to the base data for an offline plan, e.g. if changes have been made to survey capture data or other linked Landonline data since the plan has been taken offline
• define both diagrams and layout sheets offline – much of this functionality will be similar to that which currently occurs online, although there will be some minor variations to accommodate any unique requirements of offline plan generation
• run validation checks similar to those that will be applied once online, and
• print draft copies of the offline plan from the offline application.

Some of these features may need to be reconsidered during development, however, we are optimistic that they will all be included.

Licensing costs

Licensing costs for the offline component will not be known until the final toolsets have been chosen. The toolsets currently being assessed have minimal ongoing licensing costs and will allow multiple users to install the software within a firm independent from any Landonline licence(s) that the firm may hold. A Landonline licence will, however, be required to commence and complete the online submission of a survey.

Delivery date

The delivery of 'Offline Plan Generation with Diagram Creation' is currently scheduled for late 2009. To achieve this, rigorous controls on scope will be applied, and the functionality that is currently available in Plan Layout will be delivered in Offline Plan Layout.

Some enhancements may be considered that involve no change to the design and build. However, most enhancements will be delivered via the current enhancement/change request process that will continue to run as a parallel process.

2007/08 Annual Geodetic Survey and Maintenance Programme update

Over the past year, LINZ has undertaken one of the largest geodetic survey and maintenance programmes since the advent of New Zealand Geodetic Datum 2000 (NZGD2000). The fieldwork and data processing has involved eight survey firms who are accredited to provide geodetic survey and/or maintenance services.

More than 90% of the new geodetic marks have now been loaded into Landonline and the Geodetic Database and are available for use. The remainder are expected to be loaded in the next month.

Survey programme

Most marks included in the survey programme were existing cadastral marks, which were surveyed and upgraded to 5th Order accuracy. A number of existing low-order trig stations and benchmarks were also included.

In the end, 802 marks were surveyed to 5^th Order standards as part of the survey programme. The areas covered are summarised in the table below. For a more detailed breakdown of areas covered, including a plot, see the 2007/08 Annual Programme on the LINZ website.

Region	No of marks surveyed	No of marks maintained
Bay of Islands – Whangarei	70	4
Kaipara – Mangawhai – Piha	96	9
South Auckland	59	0
Waikato	115	19
Bay of Plenty – Taupo	61	17
Central North Island	83	11
Hawkes Bay – Wairarapa	58	18
Wellington	66	6
Nelson – Marlborough	31	2
Westland	81	0
Canterbury	64	1
Otago	18	0
TOTAL	802	87

Maintenance programme

The physical maintenance programme mainly consists of marks that already have at least 5^th Order accuracy. These marks are often beaconed trigs in rural areas, which provide assistance in obtaining a bearing origin for cadastral surveys.

Where continued usage justifies it, marks and beacons are maintained approximately every five years.

In 2007/08, 369 marks had full maintenance carried out. The areas covered are summarised in the table below:

Region	No of marks maintained
North Auckland	50
South Auckland – Gisborne	33
Taranaki	17
Hawkes Bay	18
Wellington	41
Marlborough	9
Canterbury	29
Otago	39
Southland	28
Taupo Bench Marks	105
TOTAL	369

User feedback

Planning an effective geodetic programme would not be possible without the feedback received from users of the geodetic system. We would like to thank those who took the time to recommend areas and marks requiring geodetic survey and/or maintenance.

Recommendations unable to be included in 2007/08 do get reconsidered for future years and many are included in the 2008/09 programme.

New e-survey tips and hints

The e-survey Tips and Hints on the Landonline website are continually being refined and added to.

e-survey plan examples updated

The following e-survey plan examples have been added to the best practice section of this website:

Category	Plan number
Amalgamating	DP 350714 LT 347664 DP 335609
Covenant	LT 356362
GPS	DP 352920 DP 357773 DP 368809 DP 369975
Record purposes	SO 354038
Unit plans	DP 374074

Capturing remote trig observations

If a survey includes some trig observations that are some distance away from the actual area of subdivision, the spatial window (Plan Generation/Define Diagram) may take some time to load.

Steps to follow where remote trig observations are included:

1. Do not capture trig shots initially. Remove these if already captured.
2. Capture all other survey data as normal.
3. Run Pre-validation to ensure that all Y Fatal rules pass.
4. Open Plan Generation/Define Diagram and create all user defined diagrams that will be required for Layout Sheets.
5. Return to Capture and capture the trig observation(s).
6. Re-link one parcel.
7. Re run Pre-validation to ensure all Y Fatal rules pass.
8. Open Plan Generation/Layout Sheets. Note: do not re-open the Define Diagrams as the trig observations will now be included.
9. In Layout Sheet/Survey Sheet remove the 'system generated survey traverse diagram' off the 'Survey' Layout Sheet.
10. Layout out the new 'user defined survey traverse diagram'. The trig observations will appear as truncated lines.
11. Layout all other diagrams.

If further user defined diagrams are required after capturing the trig shots, two options are available:

• Repeat steps 1 to 11, or
• Leave the trig shots captured and wait for the spatial window in Define Diagrams to open. (Warning – depending on how long the trig shots are this may take some time.)

Are you using the e-survey best practice tools and tips?

The self-help information in the e-survey section is ordered by the experience level of the surveyor – novice, experienced and advanced.

Spanning a wide range of topics, the best practice section includes the tips and hints full index.

The e-survey training resources section has all the links and background on training materials provided by LINZ such as the user guide, computer based training (CBT) DVD, and the support available to surveyors.