GPS Waypoints User Guide (part 2)

Surveying Waypoints and Paths

The GPS Waypoints is a multi sector surveying tool for professional and personal purposes. This is the part 2 of the user guide, that is composed of 3 parts, aiming to describe the installation, configuration, surveying and mapping functionalities of the product.

Part2: Surveying with Waypoints and Paths

  • Waypoints surveying
    • Basic surveying with export
    • Share a waypoint
    • Find a place from a saved Point
    • Find a place from an imported Point
    • Thematic surveying with tagging
    • Thematic surveying with automatic tagging (shortcut keys)
    • Thematic surveying with photos
    • Field check for insitu observation and validation
    • Sort and export the closest Points
  • Paths and Areas surveying
    • Manual Path surveying
    • Auto Path tracking
    • Areas surveying
    • Export Paths and Polygons

[ Index ]   [ Part 1 Installation & Configuration ]   [ Part 2 Surveying Waypoints and Paths ]   [ Part 3 Premium and Maps ]

Waypoints surveying

Basic Surveying with export: you can acquire Points on the field during a surveying activity and build a business or a personal geographic database. The mapping points collected can be exported and shared to other applications (e.g. Dropbox/Google Drive). The Share option is more convenient and popular since the Export option will require access to your device’s internal storage, typically on the folder “/gps-waypoints”.  Finally, after getting the exported data, you may view and process it with any geo-spatial tool, such as Google Earth for the general consumers.

Share a waypoint:  share your Points with locations with other persons via messaging application (e.g. gmail). It could be useful in situations, such as visit my office on this location, meet me at this coffee shop, check out the issue I found, etc…

Find a place from a saved Point:  you can get directions to Points previously saved and available on your database. It could be useful in situations to go back to the starting point (for instance, when in tourism, you want typically to go back to your accommodation).Find a place from a imported Point:  you can import waypoints to your database by searching for a Point-of-Interest or for an address. After confirming the search results with the coordinates of the place, you can save it as new waypoint and then check the directions to it. 

Thematic surveying with tagging: allows to collect Points and classify them using specific themes (e.g. cartography, environment, urban planning). The thematic surveying uses the tagging functionality that can be customized with the specific thematic data model. The waypoints can be classified according to the data model and can be exported with all metadata to a KML file.  In some surveying activities the mobile precision may be enough but in others, requiring better precision, the application can be connected with an external bluetooth receiver (Professional Survey).

Thematic surveying with automatic tagging (shortcut keys): In Premium mode, it is possible to use an external keyboard and assign shortcut keys to automate the Waypoints surveying activities.

Thematic surveying with photos: allows collecting Points and characterized them with photos (one photo per point). The photos are saved in local storage. They can be exported to KMZ file format (points with embedded pictures) or be accessible using a file manager.

Field Check for insitu observation and validation: you can import multiple points from CSV or GPX file. Visit on the field each of the points imported with the “Get Me There” function and make observations or validation of the previous classification tags (for instance it could be used to validate maps derived from airborne or satellite imagery (Professional validation).

Sort and export the closest Points: you can start by sorting Points by proximity to find the most relevant ones. Then, use the multi-selection feature by long pressing the desired Points to export.  Upon completing the selection, just press “Export Selected” button.

Paths and Areas surveying

Manual Path surveying: you can build a Path with an ordered sequence of points and measure the distances of this path (Personal/Professional Surveying).

Auto Path tracking: allows to track a moving activity such as bicycle ride, run, car drive or flight, building automatically an order sequence of points (path) and measuring distances of the activity. The exported result in GPX format can be loaded on sports platforms.

Areas surveying: allows building polygons of the land properties on the field and measures their perimeters and areas.When better accuracy is needed (such as in cadastral surveying), an external receiver could be used.

Import Paths from waypoints: allows building a path from a set of Points, measuring distances between Points.