Stake out and navigate to a point
Walk to any asset with a live arrow, distance and ΔN/ΔE readout, then record where the stake landed as an as-staked point.
On this page
The stakeout screen guides you to a point: an arrow, the distance, and how far to go north and east. When you're on it, you can save an as-staked point, a record of where the stake actually went and how far it was from the design.
Before you start
- A project with at least one asset to go to: a design point you imported, a point computed in COGO, or anything you collected.
- A position source. Phone GPS will get you to within a few metres. For setting stakes you need an RTK receiver.
Open stakeout
There are two ways in:
- From Tools: go to Tools → Navigate to asset. In the Navigate to… list, tap the asset.
- From an asset: tap its pin on the map or its row in the list, then tap Stake out / navigate to this asset.
The Stake out screen opens full screen. Tap Done to leave.
For a line or an area, stakeout goes vertex by vertex. It starts at the vertex nearest you and shows Vertex 2 of 5 (or Corner for an area). Use the arrows either side to move to the previous or next one.
Reading the screen
| Readout | What it means |
|---|---|
| Arrow | Points toward the target, turned by the phone's compass heading. |
| Distance | Horizontal distance to the target, in your display units. |
| Direction and bearing | For example NE · bearing 47°: the direction to the target in degrees from north. |
| ΔN / ΔE | How far the target is north and east of you, in the same units as the distance. Positive ΔN means walk north; negative ΔE means walk west. |
| ΔH (msl) or ΔH (ellipsoidal) | Height of the target relative to you. Shown only when both have a height on the same basis. |
| Position | Your position source and its accuracy. |
With a coordinate system set, ΔN and ΔE are computed on the project grid. Without one, they use a flat local approximation that's fine for walking to a point but less exact over long distances.
The colour tells you how close you are:
- Blue: more than three times the tolerance away.
- Yellow: within three times the tolerance.
- Green: within tolerance. The ring shrinks around a target dot, Within tolerance appears, and the phone gives a success haptic as you cross into it.
Tolerance
Pick the tolerance with the Tolerance control: 0.5 m, 1 m, 2 m or 5 m. It starts at 2 m each time you open stakeout. It sets when the screen turns green, and it's the pass/fail threshold stored with an as-staked point.
Save an as-staked point
- Set the stake or mark on the target and hold the pole still over it.
- Tap Save as-staked point. The phone confirms with a haptic.
- Read the result under the button:
- Residual 0.034 m, in green if within tolerance or orange if not.
- ΔN, ΔE and, when heights compare, ΔU. These are measured minus design: a positive ΔN means the stake is north of the design point.
- A note saying whether it was differenced on the project grid or on a local tangent plane.
The button then reads Stakeout recorded and stays disabled for that vertex, because one stake answers one design point. Move to the next vertex to save another.
What the app records
Each as-staked point is stored in two ways:
- A Check Shot asset named Stakeout: <target> (with the vertex number for lines and areas). It carries the full position record, like any collected point, and notes such as Stakeout against STK-701 — 0.03 m at 47° (tolerance 2.0 m).
- A check-shot record linking the measurement to the design point, with ΔN, ΔE, ΔU, the horizontal residual, the tolerance and pass or fail.
These appear in the QA report and in checks.csv in the export bundle, with the kind stakeout. They're never used for site localization, which only uses checks on known control.