Existing Tree Tool (ETT) data connection to Excel

[Ozzie]

Hi all
Am not in here very often but once was very active
We are a landscape design, landscape architecture and consulting arborist company in Melbourne Australia and have 3 VW LM licenses and use the ETT a lot
Some years ago I built a web form - Gravity Forms on Wordpress to collect tree data on site for the ETT
I did not pursue it as then I thought what happens if you do not have a good internet connection and decided to wait
Since it seems there are a few companies where you can build forms to do such things that will work on both IOS and Android devices that do not need an internet connection
I would like to be able to collect tree data on site, export to excel; if that is the way to go and import that data into VW to populate the ETT 
We have strict criteria within it we use manually right now so the fields etc are not the issue
What I would like to know?
Is it possible to pull such data into the ETT?
Is excel ok to use?
And how does one achieve that?

Thanks in advance for any help! 

Darrell

 

[Jeff Prince]

You can collect your data directly with Numbers or Excel running on a phone or tablet.  That spreadsheet can be used to make you existing trees in one step.

 

A slightly better method would be to use a GIS data collector app so you could get position information.  From one of those apps, export to Numbers or Excel and then import into Vectorworks.  You can create 100s of existing trees, located correctly, in seconds using this method.

 

use off the shelf tech, no need to write your own collection app.

[Tom W.]

Jeff what kind of accuracy are you talking about in the app? Thanks

[Jeff Prince]

16 minutes ago, Tom W. said:

Jeff what kind of accuracy are you talking about in the app? Thanks

 

It depends on the type of device you are running it on.

Phone or tablet, it's close enough if you are willing to shift some trees around based on an aerial photo and okay with the trunk being off by a few meters.

Phone or tablet + RTK receiver, you are cooking with gas and within centimeters of accuracy.

If something from one of the survey device manufactures like Trimble, Bad Elf, etc...  within centimeters or better.

[Tom W.]

14 minutes ago, jeff prince said:

 

It depends on the type of device you are running it on.

Phone or tablet, it's close enough if you are willing to shift some trees around based on an aerial photo and okay with the trunk being off by a few meters.

Phone or tablet + RTK receiver, you are cooking with gas and within centimeters of accuracy.

If something from one of the survey device manufactures like Trimble, Bad Elf, etc...  within centimeters or better.

 

Ok thanks I have a GPS Location app on my phone which has max 5.0m accuracy so ok for the odd task but not much. I looked into getting a GNSS receiver + even that was only 0.5m accurate off the shelf: you had to pay an annual subscription to get 2cm accuracy. I just wondered if there was something out there that would give me better accuracy than 5.0m without spending £5K...

[Ozzie]

Thanks for the information
Will look into it all