Select, copy and paste survey points

Survey points can be copied and pasted within a project, between projects in two browser tabs, and to and from a spreadsheet. Every change is one undo step, and the surface rebuilds from the new points at once.

Select points

With Select (VV):

• Click a point to select it (and only it). Its numbers show under Properties.
• ⇧Shift and click adds a point to the selection, or takes it out.
• ⇧Shift and drag draws a box: the points inside it are added to the selection. A drag without ⇧Shift pans, as always.
• ⌘ACtrl+A (or More › Select all points) selects every point.
• EscEsc (or More › Select none) clears the selection.

Selected points have a ring. With more than one selected, Properties shows how many, their numbers, their elevation range and their groups.

Copy, cut and delete

• Copy or ⌘CCtrl+C copies the selected points. CivilCraft keeps the copy, and also puts it on the system clipboard as point rows, so you can paste it straight into a spreadsheet or a text file.
• More › Cut or ⌘XCtrl+X copies them and deletes them, in one step.
• More › Delete or fn DeleteDelete deletes them. ⌘ZCtrl+Z brings them back.

The rows are point, northing, easting, elevation, description (P,N,E,Z,D), separated by commas, with three decimals. To get easting before northing, set Point rows in CivilCraft settings. A description a spreadsheet would treat as a formula (starting with =, +, - or @) gets an apostrophe in front, so it stays text.

Paste

1. Press ⌘VCtrl+V or click Paste. The points follow the pointer as small crosses, with a dotted line back to where they came from.
2. Click where they go. The middle of the copied points lands on the click.
3. Or press ReturnEnter to put them at their own coordinates, or EscEsc to cancel.

More › Paste in place or ⇧⌘VCtrl+Shift+V pastes at the points' own coordinates straight away. The pasted points are selected afterwards, so you can copy, move or delete them again.

Point numbers never clash

Two points never share a number. When you paste:

• A pasted point keeps its number when no point in the project has it. So after Cut, the points paste back with their own numbers, and points copied from another project keep theirs where they are free.
• A pasted point whose number is taken gets a new whole number: one more than the highest number in use, counting up.
• The status bar says what happened, for example "1 kept its number; 9 got new numbers: 10–18 became 277–285".

In CivilCraft settings you can choose Always new numbers, and a number for new numbers to start at, for example 5000 for design points.

Duplicate

More › Duplicate or ⌘DCtrl+D makes a copy of the selected points that follows the pointer: click where it goes. The copies always get new numbers, and CivilCraft's clipboard is left as it was.

From a spreadsheet or a text file

Select rows of points in a spreadsheet (point, northing, easting, elevation, description) and copy them. In CivilCraft press ⌘VCtrl+V and click where they go, or press ⇧⌘VCtrl+Shift+V to put them at their own coordinates, which is usually what you want for real survey data.

The rows are read exactly as a point file: commas, tabs or spaces, a header row if there is one. Without a header, the column order comes from Point rows in CivilCraft settings.

When both are there, CivilCraft decides by what is newer: rows on the system clipboard that differ from CivilCraft's last copy were copied later, so they are pasted. Text that holds no points is ignored, and CivilCraft's own copy is pasted instead.

Between projects and tabs

The copy is kept in this browser, so a second tab of CivilCraft can paste it, even after the first tab closes. Points copied in a metre project and pasted into a feet project keep their numbers as they are: nothing is converted, and the status bar says so.

What is not copied

Only survey points are copied for now. Alignments, pads, pipe networks, breaklines and boundaries cannot be copied or pasted yet. Pasting cannot move existing points: copy them somewhere and delete the originals, or use Cut and paste.