nPoles

The word String beside the string number in Point Edit is now a link: click it and a small box takes a name for that string - William St, kerb, road edge, the pole line - and the box's underlined word lists every string in the job with its name. The name belongs to the string, so every point on it shares it, and it shows wherever the string number does: the string boxes in Point Edit and the Add Point dialogs, the Surveying Calculator's points table and its new String box beside the description code, Clearances Check, the plan view's point description and the tooltip on the string's line. The same link sits beside the string number in the plan view's Add Point dialog and the boundary dialogs. Design > Point String Names lists them all for editing in place. Saved in the job file; nPoles Field mini shows and edits the same names.

Circuits 17 to 24 now take total station readings exactly like 1 to 16: the crossarm height, the three insulator boxes, the three offset boxes and the remark, for a reflectorless read and for a height from the vertical angle. A reflectorless read taken with an offset box selected fills that side's insulator height and offset from the one shot, and the centre conductor offset now carries its side, negative to the left of the line and positive to the right. The boxes that turn green for a stored observation keep the User Settings font, and every job's conductor strings start with Not Active and 0 - Non String on every circuit.

A company data update no longer overwrites the databases and settings profiles a business has edited. nPoles brings the new data in file by file on its next start: new files arrive, untouched files are brought up to date with the old copy kept, and an edited pole, crossarm, insulator, transformer, description-code, timber-species or abbreviation database is merged record by record so your changes and the new shipped entries both survive. Settings profiles merge the same way, field by field, so a shipped profile change now reaches every install for the first time. nPoles says once where the previous data was kept, and warns when the company data installed is older than the program.

A description code can shade a footprint: a house drawn as a rectangle on the aerial image fills as one shape with an outline, in the colour, pattern, opacity and line width set in the Description Code editor, and an edit saved there shows at once. The drawing tools show the string number a shape goes on, a spacing of 0 keeps only the corners, and a Snap to points tick lets corners land exactly where you click. The view stays where you left it as points are added or edited, a job frames on its survey when opened, and Zoom to survey brings the whole job back.

The plan view gains a tool box: measure (now with area), line, arc, circle, rectangle and square tools that generate surveyed points along a shape, on a bearing where the work needs it, with a reduced level looked up for each point as it is made. Right-click blank map space for Add Point Here, with the ground level found from the state's elevation model or contours - Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland, and Switzerland's terrain model - and Point Edit's Spatial tab has a Look Up RL button for any point. The map can be panned and zoomed 50 km around the job, and the basemap stays exactly on its ground.

An Undo button on the toolbar reverses point-changing actions across nPoles - edits, clones, deletions, point-number swaps, file imports, points added from the map, and whole-survey coordinate changes from Transform Datum, Tie to Control and Re-base Survey - with a history of recent actions that shows exactly what undoing each one will change before it is undone.

nPoles now works on Swiss jobs end to end. Coordinates are on the LV95 national grid, and GNSS heights are reduced with swisstopo's CHGeo2004 geoid onto whichever height datum the job is set to — LN02, still the official frame and what published fixed-point heights are on, or the modern LHN95, which differ by up to half a metre with elevation. The plan view draws all 32,125 published Swiss fixed points, with heights on 96 per cent of them, as a 13 MB download. A canton's own cadastral survey can be added as well — property boundaries and the communal fixed points that are the marks actually found in a street. The plan view can also draw swisstopo's own maps underneath: the national map in colour or grey, the topographic map, 10 cm aerial imagery, and the 1946 national photograph, which shows a route as the ground was before most of what stands on it now.

Some survey and cadastral registers are licensed to the surveyor rather than to nPoles, so they cannot be supplied with it — Landgate's Western Australian data, and the Swiss cantons that require a login. Download the GeoPackage under your own licence and add it through Layers, Map Data, and it draws like any other layer. The file stays where you keep it: nPoles neither copies it nor sends it anywhere. Map Data also shows every dataset nPoles can draw, where each came from, and whether its file is on the machine.

Registering now works from behind company firewalls and proxies: nPoles first uses an ordinary secure web connection — the same kind a browser makes, through the system proxy where one is configured — and only falls back to the classic direct connection if that fails. When a network blocks everything, the new Manual Activation finishes the job with a code from any phone or browser: scan the QR code nPoles shows, receive a short activation code on screen and by email, and type it in. The computer being activated needs no internet at all.

A reflectorless read on a cross-arm, stay or conductor now stores the shot's full easting, northing and level with the job, not just its height. Heights measured this way show with a light green background, a long press pops up the stored coordinates, and shooting a wire fills in both the insulator height and the conductor offset automatically once the pole face has been shot — in either order. Typing over a green field clears its stored shot, so the colour always tells the truth.

A new Report menu entry lists every point and conductor string that has changed since its earliest backup — what moved, what was re-specified, and by how much — headed with the job, its location and who prepared it, and saved as PDF or spreadsheet. Backups themselves gain a note asked for at the moment they are made, and a Diff button beside each backup shows exactly what differs from the point as it now stands.

Saving is now crash-proof: the new file is written completely and only then swapped over the old one, so a power loss, crash or full disk mid-save can no longer destroy a job — and a failed save says so instead of pretending. Job files also accept the full character set, stringing chart %MBL limits stop vanishing between sessions, and every file now states its format version and the EPSG code of its map grid so other software can identify the coordinate system at a glance. The same protection covers nPoles Field mini's save-after-every-point on the phone.

A job surveyed on a local datum can now be tied straight onto supplied coordinates: pick the job points the control belongs to, type the supplied values beside them, and apply the best-fit transformation — rotation, scale and shift fitted over every pair, with each mark's residual shown live so a wrong value stands out before anything moves. The classic hand-over problem, solved properly from the Spatial menu.

Local site grids that are really a rotated copy of MGA — the Latrobe Valley mine grids — are now first-class: pick the site in Survey Properties and scale factors compute at the true MGA position. Hazelwood and Loy Yang ship as presets, any other site grid can be defined from control pairs, reviewed, edited and saved for future jobs, and a GNSS localisation measured in the field can become a saved site grid in one press.

The description code list now shows every code with its plan-view symbol and its meaning — wherever points are added or edited. The Database Editor gains a Description Codes tab with symbol previews and a printable symbol legend, and about forty code meanings per utility were recovered from the Victorian distributors' own drafting standards.

Surveys now travel by LandXML in both directions: import a controller's export — Topcon, Trimble, Leica, 12d — with numbers, codes, remarks and the coordinate system checked from the file's own metadata, and export design points the same way for stake out with any brand of field kit. Verified against real Topcon Field controller files.

Live GNSS has arrived: connect an RTK receiver over the network or Bluetooth, feed it corrections over NTRIP with the free caster networks preset, and accept fixed positions straight into the job — with stake out, site calibration onto local coordinates, short-occupation averaging and heights on real AHD. A total station is no longer the only way to survey with nPoles.

Survey Properties can nominate an origin mark and nPoles then shows ground coordinates scaled about it — in the points list, the point editor, the Measure tool and the CAD exports — exactly the way a field controller's grid-to-ground switch works. The job file stays on the grid, and every exported drawing now states its coordinate basis.

Jobs can now be surveyed on NZGD2000 with full New Zealand map layers, on Ireland's ITM grid, on South Africa's LO system, and on plain WGS84 UTM zones north or south of the equator — the modern grids of much of Asia and Africa.

Drag a loop around an area and everything inside it from the layers switched on — survey marks, cadastral corners, property and road boundaries — is offered for adding to the survey in bulk, with counts and description codes to review before anything lands.

A Measure button chains taps into a run with every leg labelled — distance, grid bearing, height difference and running total — snapping to survey points, marks, spans and boundaries, or measuring to any spot on the street map.

The survey marks and property boundary layers now cover New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania and the ACT alongside Victoria — nearly 700,000 survey marks in all. nPoles picks the right state's data from where the survey is, and a job near a border shows both sides at once.

Surveys transform between GDA94 and GDA2020 in both directions using the official ICSM transformation grid — centimetre level, Australia-wide — so data supplied in one datum can be delivered in the other.

One nPoles folder now holds every installed version, ticked on and off in a single maintenance tool. Data, settings, registration and the map datasets are shared, so updating never re-downloads or loses anything — and an old version stays installed for old jobs.

The plan view can draw the state's survey control marks (SMES) — with each mark's sketch plan and full report a tap away, readable offline once opened — plus property boundaries, road casements, street names, cadastral corner accuracy, contours and the coastline. Marks, corners and boundary lines can be added straight into the job as survey points.

An OpenStreetMap basemap can be drawn beneath the survey points, cached so it still shows without an internet connection, with a Street View button to look at any spot from the road. A job can also be started from a street address, framing the plan before a single point is read.

A timber pole's rating now follows its species and measured dimensions: the strength group, surveyed girth and diameters drive the short- and long-duration strengths, the deflection limit and the AS/NZS 7000 limit-state capacity — in place of fixed factors.

If a project file is ever lost or corrupted, File → Import can rebuild the job from its survey log. An optional setting logs the complete job on every save, so even conductors, stays and pole data can be recovered.

An in-app assistant (Shift+F1) answers questions from the reference manual with its sources shown, and can look at the open job — how many poles, where point 72 is, what conductor runs where — pointing at the plan view as it answers.

Click any object in a 3D view to see its real properties — pole dimensions, crossarm code, conductor, stay wire — with every value tagged as surveyed, from the database or estimated; and measure between any two points with the vertical and horizontal components shown.

A virtual keyboard made for gloved hands and bright sun: numeric, compact and full layouts with the degree and diameter symbols surveying needs, working on every kind of field — spinboxes, bearings and dropdowns included — without the Windows touch keyboard fighting it.

Pole Load draws the pole as a schedule-style stick diagram — attachments, stays, crossarm codes and loads — exportable as an image or straight into CAD as a DXF, in flat or semi-3D style.

A new Route View draws the whole job in three dimensions — poles, crossarms, conductors, stays and the surveyed surrounds along the real route — alongside the single-pole sketch and clearance views.

Pole loading now draws the full picture: a bending moment diagram with the pole's capacity envelope — bolt-hole reductions included — and a deflection profile checked against the allowed limit, for timber, concrete and TITAN poles alike.

The point editor, clearance checks and pole loading all now carry 24 circuit attachments per pole, up from 20 — enough for the busiest joint-use poles.