Quick start: your first drawing in ten minutes

From a new account to points on a drawing, a surface, and a plotted PDF, the short version.

6 min read

Before you start

You need two things: a coordinate system your work is on, and some data, a points file, a DXF, a LAS, or nothing at all if you are drawing from scratch. Everything else can wait.

Bring a points file if you have one

A CSV of point number, northing, easting, elevation and description is the fastest way to see Backsight do something useful with your own data.

1. Make a project

Sign in and choose Projects → New project.
Give it a name and a project number.
Choose the coordinate system your survey is on. This is the one decision worth slowing down for, see Choosing a coordinate system.
Choose a vertical reference. If you are on an assumed datum, say so; it travels as a label on everything you produce.
Save. The project opens in the workspace.

Note

A project carries its own grid, drawings, points, surfaces, imagery, clouds and locates. Everything inside it lives on that grid.

2. Get your data in

Whichever you have:

Points: Import (top bar) → Survey points. Map your columns, check the preview, import.
A drawing: Import (top bar) → DXF or LandXML drawing, or LandXML for surfaces and alignments.
A point cloud: Import (top bar) → Point cloud. LAS, LAZ, E57, PLY or XYZ/PTS.
Drone photos: Drone mode → a mission, then upload the flight.
Nothing: skip to the next step and draw.

3. Draw something

Draw mode is the CAD canvas. A project starts with no drawing: open the Backsight menu (the wordmark, top left) and choose New drawing, name it, keep the project's coordinate system, Create.

Pick a tool from the ribbon, Polyline, Circle, Point, or type its alias on the command line and press Enter.
Click on the canvas to place vertices. Double-click, or press Enter, to finish.
Press Esc to cancel anything in progress.
Click an entity to select it; its properties open on the right, where you can change layer, colour, linetype and labels.
Ctrl+Z undoes. Save writes it to the project.

The command line is faster than the ribbon

Type a letter anywhere and the command line takes focus. L for line, O for offset, DI for distance, Z to zoom. Enter on its own repeats your last command.

4. Build a surface

Switch to Surfaces mode.
Choose New surface, and pick where the points come from under Points from, the drawing's layers or an imported point file. A point cloud builds its ground surface from its own page, and the panel links you there.
Add breaklines if you have them: they are enforced, so a ridge stays a ridge.
Build. You get a triangulation, its statistics and its extent.
Contour it, drop spot elevations on it, or measure a volume against it.

5. Plot it

Switch to Sheets mode.
New sheet: choose a size, an orientation and a scale.
Fill in the title block, drawing title, client, project number, date, who surveyed and drew it.
Watch the live preview: it shows the sheet at true proportions, with your logo and legend where you place them.
Plot to PDF. The file is kept with the sheet exactly as it read, and a checksum, so you can prove what you issued.