Tutorials CivilCraft help Reference
Point file formats
The column orders CivilCraft reads, how it finds the separator and the header row, which header names it recognizes, and how rows are checked.
Written for CivilCraft 0.3. The same help is inside the app: press F1.
A point file is plain text, one point per line. CivilCraft reads it in the browser; nothing is uploaded.
Column orders
The letters name the columns from left to right: P point number or name, N northing, E easting, Z elevation, D description.
| Order | Columns | Example line |
|---|---|---|
| PNEZD | point, northing, easting, elevation, description | 101,2080000.00,6150000.00,250.00,GRD |
| PENZD | point, easting, northing, elevation, description | 101,6150000.00,2080000.00,250.00,GRD |
| PNEZ | point, northing, easting, elevation | 101,2080000.00,6150000.00,250.00 |
| PENZ | point, easting, northing, elevation | 101,6150000.00,2080000.00,250.00 |
| NEZD | northing, easting, elevation, description | 2080000.00,6150000.00,250.00,GRD |
| ENZD | easting, northing, elevation, description | 6150000.00,2080000.00,250.00,GRD |
| NEZ | northing, easting, elevation | 2080000.00 6150000.00 250.00 |
| ENZ | easting, northing, elevation | 6150000.00 2080000.00 250.00 |
Orders without P number the points 1, 2, 3 … in file order. X is easting and Y is northing.
Separators
CivilCraft looks at the first 20 lines and picks the first of these that appears on at least 60% of them: comma, tab, semicolon. Otherwise it splits on runs of spaces.
- In comma, tab and semicolon files, a field in double quotes can hold the separator (
"FL, NORTH"), and""inside quotes is one quote mark. - In space-separated files, a description at the end of the line may contain spaces: everything after the last coordinate column is the description.
- Lines starting with
#,;or//, and blank lines, are skipped. - A byte-order mark at the start of the file is ignored.
Header row
The first line is treated as a header when fewer than two of its fields are numbers. If every field of the header is a name CivilCraft recognizes, the column order comes from it ("from the header row"). Names are matched without regard to case, spaces, dots, underscores, hyphens and brackets:
| Column | Recognized names |
|---|---|
| P | pt, pnt, point, point no, point number, number, no, id, name, pt#, point#, # |
| N | n, north, northing, y, y coord, lat, latitude |
| E | e, east, easting, x, x coord, lon, long, longitude |
| Z | z, elev, elevation, el, height, h, z coord, rl |
| D | d, desc, description, code, raw description, full description, note, notes, feature |
If any header name is not recognized, or the names do not make one of the eight orders, the header is skipped and the order is guessed from the column count.
Guessing from the column count
With no usable header and Columns left on Detect:
- 5 or more columns: PNEZD.
- 4 columns: PNEZ when the first column is a whole number on every sampled line and the fourth is a number; NEZD otherwise.
- 3 columns: NEZ.
PNEZD and PENZD cannot be told apart from the numbers. The guess follows Point rows in CivilCraft settings: P, N, E, Z, D at the start, or P, E, N, Z, D (then four columns read as PENZ and three as ENZ). The dialog says "guessed from the column count — check that northing and easting are not swapped". Pick the right order in Columns if the preview looks wrong.
How rows are checked
- A row may leave out the description.
- Northing and easting must be numbers. Elevation may be empty (the point is kept but not used in the surface).
- The point number may be any text (letters too, such as
CP1), but not empty. - If a point number repeats, the first row is kept and the others are listed as not read.
- Descriptions are kept up to 200 characters; control characters become spaces.
- Up to 200 unread rows are kept for the dialog (25 shown), and all of them are counted.
Point groups
A point's group is the first word of its description in capitals. "GRD", "grd shot" and "Grd" are all group GRD. A point without a description is in "(no description)". See Import survey points.
Writing points
CivilCraft does not export a point text file yet. Points go out in LandXML (as CgPoints), in the project file, and through GIS Export as a shapefile, GeoPackage or GeoJSON with P, N, E, Z and D fields (Export as-built data for GIS). See Not built yet.