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As the schools break up and a large proportion of the British public depart on their holidays to foreign climes in a bid to escape the oppressive heat of the British summer, this is traditionally a quieter time for us at McCarthy Taylor. What better time then to crack on with the Beta program and get as many users testing it as possible? We've decided to summarise the main Beta program enhancements again just in case you missed our last bulletin. We've also got a report on the latest Leica Workshop and news about our website.

Program News

The version of LSS we ship out with every new dongle is what we call our 'Main Release Version'. This version has gone through a long period of testing by us and our users and at the time of writing this bulletin we are currently on version 9.70.14. If anyone finds a bug in the program it gets fixed in this version and we then upload an update which then becomes version 9.70.15 and so on. If you're running an earlier version than this then you can download the latest from our website or activate 'Automatic Updates' or get LSS to perform a manual check using the command 'Help / Check for LSS update'. Either way, if you're running the latest software you can be sure you're benefiting from your licence fee.

In the software game it isn't good to stand still for long, which is why we are constantly working on new developments and any completely new code is put into what we call our 'Beta program' and we invite all of our users to contribute to this testing programme by downloading LSS Beta from our website and reporting back to us what they think of the new commands and methods we have introduced. And although we do our best to make this version as reliable as possible, it isn't completely unknown for it to perform in an unexpected way or even crash. That's what Beta testing is all about, but you, the users of the software, are best placed to test it and in exchange you benefit from the latest product developments before anyone else.

Highlights of the Beta version are...

• A new 'Active Cursor' which displays information realtime beside the cursor when in several query commands
• Horizontal ZTV command which calculates how much or a viewer's horizontal field of view is occupied by an object or objects in the landscape
• Major enhancements to Query Section including full annotation, zooming, display of surfaces, feature codes, level, coordinates etc and the section screen can be printed (more to come in future releases)
• New XML import and Export options for surveys and machine control systems
• Topcon TN3 export option
• Enhancements to the Floor Assessment commands to allow for +ve and -ve level or thickness values
• HEC-RAS and ISIS exports enhanced
• Improvements to AutoCAD Export
• Multiple selection capabilities in 'Edit Surface Replace and Delete'
• Improvements to the display of features when the 'Selection' button is used
• File Save icon changes colour (from grey) to indicate if the save interval has been exceeded (red) or something has changed in the survey and saving it would preserve these changes (blue) and more intuitive save mechanism
• The concept of link feature mirroring has been revamped. A mirror is no longer required for directional link features (hedge to left and right etc).

This is just a selection and there are many other improvements and we're also planning even more in subsequent updates.

Leica Mid-Range Workshop

Last week we held the first Leica Mid-Range instrument workshop at our offices in Birdlip. This workshop covers the full range of instruments from the 300, 400, 700, 800 to the Flexline and as it turned out we had three different models which made the course challenging, yet rewarding. Once again we received valuable support from Adam Ball, Leica Geosystems' South West Regional Trainer who was on hand to help with those tricky instrument firmware and configuration questions. The workshop included a practical survey element which, as you can see, benefited from some unseasonally dry weather.

We're hoping to run another course, this time in Glasgow in October and System 1200 workshops in Bath, Liverpool, Glasgow and Birdlip during October and December. Please visit our website for details and online booking.

Online resources

When we originally specified our new website we wanted to bring together all the documentation and support resources we previously had scattered between our forum and the LSS installation CD, plus various other materials which we hadn't yet found a home for. Now we have, in one place, the full set of LSS tutorial movies, survey instrument support files, 'Rough Guides', various supporting utility programs which LSS users might find useful and of course program and dongle driver downloads. And we've made it easier to get at these resources through a simple, yet secure login procedure.

Not only does the new website offer all these resources, but it allows you to order and pay online for software and training. You can even pay an invoice online by visiting www.dtmsoftware.com/pay-invoice.

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