20th April 2012, 06:24 PM
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).
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).
With peace and consolation hath dismist, And calm of mind all passion spent...