Leaderboard

The benchmark should be drawn at the coordinates given in the instructions (521662,44895). Your drawing limits should be set at 521500,44000 for the lower left hand corner and 523000, 45100 for the upper right hand corner. The grid starts at the benchmark and goes left to right, then top to bottom. The student is then asked to plot the survey points on the grid. The survey points will be indicated by a block constructed of two lines and shaped like the letter "X". Next to each survey point the student will indicate the elevation (i.e. - the height of the land at that particular point). After doing that for all the points given the student then will interpolate the contours between points based upon the survey elevations. The contour "interval" will be 10 feet. Contours will start at an elevation of 10 feet on the left side of the drawing and progress to the right ending in a contour of 200 (in 10 foot intervals...10, 20, 30........all the way to 200). BTW...your North arrow should go in the upper left hand corner of the drawing and not at the bottom of the drawing. The scale bar you are asked to draw should go towards the bottom right hand corner of the drawing. Your also asked to create a "tree" block much like you did in the Oleson Village project.

A benchmark is a place that any surveyor can locate. We use a benchmark as the origin for a project's coordinates, the same way AutoCAD uses (0,0,0) as an origin; everything is located in relation to that point. In the US, the Geodetic Survey has a system of benchmarks that are often used to locate project benchmarks (or to be the benchmark itself). Your project is measuring distances in feet, so 11,675 feet is 2.21 miles (11675/5280). In this case the "intersection" (whatever that is) is your origin, so all your coordinates are measured from that point. If you know about Universal Coordinate Systems (UCS) in AutoCAD, you can redefine the origin to match your project benchmark, your geodetic benchmark, or anything else that gives you the results you need. Typically, each state has its own "origin," so every location in the state can be expressed in State Plane Coordinates; this is handy if (for instance) you have data from several different surveys and want to combine them. The point BM312 is a project benchmark. The surveyor knows where BM312 is in relation to the first benchmark. You can then adjust the points from the survey to express them in relation to the first benchmark, the project benchmark, or any other origin. Technical advice: AutoCAD works better if you keep your work close to the drawing origin. Instead of physically putting your project miles away in space, change the UCS instead. Finally, "elevation" refers to the Z coordinate. A surveyor also describes the elevation of points in relation to the benchmark.