What are total stations?
Total stations once were complex and were only used by surveyors. Surveying equipment-manufacturers, such as Leica, Topcon, Trimble, and Sokkia, realized, though, that contractors could increase efficiency by doing their own layouts. This inspired the development of much more user-friendly instruments that meet the needs of contractors. Since employing a surveying team every time a contractor needs to check a location is impractical, survey teams are typically brought in only to locate the points marking the property limits. Contractors then use those points to locate their instruments and begin the process of locating points on the jobsite. In the progression of optical layout equipment, the classic levels could transfer vertical dimensions from one point to another, then with a steel tape measure and some trigonometry the surveyor could locate any point. With the development of theodolites in the 1960s and 70s, surveyors could lay out precise angles in both the vertical and horizonta
