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Civil Engineering & Construction vocabulary · Surveying and Setting Out

Total station

Meaning in civil engineering & construction, with examples

nounCommon term

In civil engineering & construction, total station means: An electronic surveying instrument that measures horizontal and vertical angles and distances, then calculates the coordinates of points.

In Turkish: total station, elektronik takeometre

How it is used

The main tool for setting out and checking work on site. It is set up over a known point and aimed at a prism held by an assistant, or used without a prism. Robotic total stations let one person work alone.

Example sentences

  1. Set up the total station on control point CP3 and check the column positions.

  2. The total station needs calibrating; the readings keep drifting.

Common collocations

  • set up the total station
  • robotic total station
  • prism
  • control point
  • total station survey
  • surveyThe work of measuring and recording the position, height and shape of land, buildings or other features, or the report and drawings that result from it.
  • set outTo mark the exact positions and levels of a building, road or other work on the ground with survey instruments, so that construction starts in the right place.
  • GNSSGlobal Navigation Satellite System: the general name for satellite positioning systems such as GPS, Galileo, GLONASS and BeiDou, used to find exact positions on the ground.
  • benchmarkA fixed point on or near the site whose height is accurately known and which is used as the reference for measuring all other levels.
  • levelThe height of a point above a fixed reference, such as a site benchmark or sea level. It is also the name of the instrument surveyors use to measure heights.

More terms: Surveying and Setting Out

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