Leica Captivate Reference Line: Measure to Line

Reference Line is a very widely used program. It is used daily by many engineers up and down the land. Quite a common “Support” call is that the program is, “Sort of working, but the levels are wrong.” There are a few settings that control how the level of the target is displayed or calculated. Assuming these are correct and the points making up the reference line are correct; the wrong levels are nearly always due to the wrong part of the program being used. On just about every total station or GNSS system I have seen, including Leica of course, there have been two types of reference line or two ways of using the one program. As this blog is about Leica Captivate, let’s use their terminology. Remember though; other manufacturers will be very similar. The two methods are: Measure to Line. Stake to Line. Both these programs will get you to the correct answer in different ways. The confusion occurs when you are expecting one method but have inadvertently selected the other method from the row of programs. I think the simplest way of explaining it is that one method shows the current target position and height relative to the line, whilst the other method sets out a position and height relative to the line. Rather than take you through each stage of every type of reference line, (this guide would be around 50 pages long at least), it will look at both methods of Reference Line, define the differences and hopefully show you a few tricks at the same time. I have tried to think of straight forward examples from the real world to illustrate the two methods. They are by absolute necessity very small, but just scale them up in your heads!