A handbook for new diggers?

[Wax]

Hand-drawn vs surveyed site plans - depends if you like s*** report illustrations really :face-stir:

so which are the s... drawings? I like CAD drawings though the person doing them needs to understand what they are doing.

Just been chatting to a guy from the OS who was lamenting the loss of the old skills, he had mm accurate GPS with a portable digital drawing tablet and a hand held distomat. There was a tape measure hidden in a pocket, he was board stiff as no skill was required.

[Marcus Brody]

It's only my personal opinion, but I think that hand-drawn plans and sections look far better than ones done purely digitally. In many ways, this is based on aesthetics (I just think that they look nicer), but as both are to some extent dependent on the interpretation of the surveyor, I'm not convinced that the digital versions are necessarily any more accurate - after all, if the edge of a feature or layer is determined to within a couple of centimetres, that's probably accurate enough for most purposes, so the sub-millimetre accuracy of the GPS unit used is probably not hugely significant. I'd suggest that GPS is probably more useful at a larger level, in ensuring that any site plans (whether hand-drawn or digital) can be accurately tied into the national grid.

[Dinosaur]

No problem with digitising and tarting up site drawings on CAD (that'd be what happens around here), it's stuff that's been planned on site by EDM, GPS or whatever, always looks c**p (personally I'm a bit old fashioned - as you may have guessed! -and like a few stones and things on my plans where relevent) - necessary maybe to save time and money, but still c**p. Am looking forward to the first time I see someone trying to 'draw' cobbles by GPS

[Jack]

GPS can be used to get just as good a plan, you just have to take lots of points close enough together to avoid all that polygon-ing-ness.

But yes stones, bricks etc, are easier by hand.

For cobbles, walls, castles etc, the miracles of rectifying photos and digitising all those pesky little stones is the way forward.
I've been involved in at least two successful uses of this technique.
Think our colleague is going to do his Roman road that way............you know the one where I found that ring.

[kevin wooldridge]

Yep Jack is right....photograph the damn cobbles/burial mound/prehistoric mortuary enclosure...use the GPS or total station to zap in a few randomly placed targets, georeference and then digiitise the rectified photos at your leisure.....

It is fantastic that people can plan things accurately and site drawings are often a wonder to behold, but there is technology available that makes a good survey job look good in the finished digital drawing.....my point to anyone criticising digital mapping is that once done it is done. A site drawing, if on overlapping 5m grid sheets, needs to be redrawn to make any sense of its size, and then possibly inked in and then almost certainly digitised if it is used in a publication of any kind. You would expect after 4 goes at drawing something that it would be pretty damn good.....but 4 times as good and cheaper than a digital plan?...I doubt it.

There are plenty of really good digital drawings that knocks spots of anything that can be done freehand.....anyone who doubts this should refer to the cemetery plans in the recent Channel Tunnel Rail Link publication of the excavations at St Pancras Churchyard, London. Not a single hand drawn plan in the whole book, other than historical maps....(all of which I should say for those who bemoan archiving digital data, after, 150+ years had lost their location orientation data and had to be re-researched and relocated by the excavation and research team).

[CARTOON REALITY]

Just to be awkward . . . I draw by hand on site then scan and trace the drawings in Illustrator. They wind up looking like very neat hand inks. It's quicker than hand inking in some respects (great when having to draw hachures) but slower in others (wattle.) The great thing about it is that you can just start the digital tracing directly after the excavation ends without worrying too much about what goes where in what phase, that can all be decided afterwards once the stuff is on the computer. In the long term it saves time.

Also I would also argue towards hand drawing on site because a good draughtsperson will look more intently at features and therefore be more likely to spot details something like rectified photography won't - for instance reused carved stones built into a wall but obscured by mortar.

Each to his own, I don't think any of this is worth arguing about, so long as the people using the tools are doing their jobs properly.

[BAJR]

I am with you all. I was an early adopter of Penmap and digital Survey. but still know how to use a dumpy and a tape. I took to Photomodeller from V1... and helped in development... but still draw many buildings by hand... sometimes with both.... I draw plans by hand, but sometimes use tech to ortho rectify and create plans from that. I have a set of Rotring Pens and also CorelDraw and Illustrator software

In general... it is knowing how to use the tool, when to use it, what the pro's are and what are the cons... when is it using a sledgehammer to crack a nut and when it is using a popgun against an elephant (sorry Elephant - but you will be ok... it's only a popgun)

I think Martins book will be helping people to understand these processes and give a full picture... rather than just say... must know how to press button on glopita machine that goes beep. ( Survey Level 2)

So... what about Photography?

[Dinosaur]

Just to be awkward . . . I draw by hand on site then scan and trace the drawings in Illustrator. They wind up looking like very neat hand inks. It's quicker than hand inking in some respects (great when having to draw hachures) but slower in others (wattle.) The great thing about it is that you can just start the digital tracing directly after the excavation ends without worrying too much about what goes where in what phase, that can all be decided afterwards once the stuff is on the computer. In the long term it saves time.

Also I would also argue towards hand drawing on site because a good draughtsperson will look more intently at features and therefore be more likely to spot details something like rectified photography won't - for instance reused carved stones built into a wall but obscured by mortar.

Each to his own, I don't think any of this is worth arguing about, so long as the people using the tools are doing their jobs properly.

:face-approve::face-approve:

As Jack knows full well there are a number of people in our office close to ending it all having spent the last month or so tracing over rectified photos of stone walls on CAD....Mr Smug here excepted of course, there are some advantages to being a technological Dinosaur

I've seen a number of instances where archaeology, notably skellies, has been photographed on site for drawing up later, only to discover than the smaller bones etc couldn't be distinguished against the background due to lack of contrast - bone-coloured gravel can be a b*****d like that...result - no proper plans! GET THE RECORD THERE AND THEN, rather than assuming technology will bail you out back at the office, you generally can't go back for another try!

[Unitof1]

GET THE RECORD THERE AND THEN- its a skellie. put that in the context register and thats it-no bloody drawing. who cares unless theres some obvious loot. what you should do is establish that it is a skellie by excavation ie two possibly articulated bones then call the corenor and leave it to them to record.And tell them that. In fact tell them that they have that day to record it or you are going to put it on the spoil heap. The next time I find one this is what I am going to attempt. oooh I am so worried that the smaller bones could not be distinguished what bloody detail are you looking for? You must work for one of those council units that grew out of MSC schemes.

[BAJR]

No reactions required. I feel a restraining order coming on.