How do you name your jobs?

I have, in the past named jobs by date, now I name them by a particular job, but I wonder if naming jobs by some sort of "general" area would be better.

The problem with GPS is that the system gives you data that is VERY transpotable to other projects.

I do a job in Green Township, then 2 years later I do a job a mile across the line in Gustavus Township.

Sometimes I think it would be nice to do that second job in the same file(Ashtech Solutions) instead of retrieving the coordinates only.

Up to a few months ago, I kept a running list of all my GPS points, but after a few thousand that becomes a pain.

I've thought of reducing all my GPS points into CAD, but getting all the dta from individual jobs(plus the BIG list) would take some time.

I'm afraid to use "high" numbers for GPS. I began with 3000 for my points, but in 2-1/2 years I'm in 5000, will Ashtech Solutions even handle 5 digits?

Just looking for some ideas to get away from all these "individual" projects.

All of our surveying jobs get a 4 digit job number assigned to them. We've been doing it since 1989 and we're now up to around 8200. Anyway, we use the first 4 letters of the client's name and the 4 digit job number as filenames. It would look like this...

mccl8200

Here's what a few files would look like:

TDS Raw files: mccl8200.rw5
TDS Coordinate files: mccl8200.cr5
Solutions Project: mccl8200.spr
AutoCAD drawing: mccl8200.dwg

AS for GPS points we just start with 1000 on every job. Primary control points where we have final positions on them get their own fixed number. We started at 0001 and now we're around 0026. All survey jobs are done seperately. We don't like to mix GPS jobs. It's all about following the surveyor's footsteps. Once we finished a job I add all of our GPS points to a common AutoCAD drawing database. We don't care what node numbers they use since we put the job number and site ID in the description of every point. Different kinds of points get placed on different kind of layers(primary control, secondary control, PLSS, propert corners, OPUS derived, etc). We use a 100,000 scale topo for our base map.

What will we do when we get past job 9999? Not sure yet. We might start the job numbers over every year. That would allow us to have 9999 jobs per year, more than enough. However, it could make it confusing after a year went by.

Tommy McClain

There are some alternatives.

One option is to use alpha-numeric SiteID's so the limitation of 0000 to 9999 is gone. Be careful about using I and O in the SiteID's. If you do, make sure everybody is with the program.

Ashtech Solutions has a Save As so project names can change as time goes by. Maybe I have a primary network that I want to use many times. I just open the primary network. Do a Save As so I am not messing up what I want to work with. I can delete unwanted parts of it if that is appropriate. Then raw data files are added and the number crunching begins.

i use control file numbers for townships or projects tied to a set of control points...once i tie into the project, i will usually adopt a job-specific job name/number...