Jobs, saving and resuming

The app keeps three kinds of work, and they're saved differently. You save surveys and designs when you make them. Jobs, the record of your grading, save themselves. Nothing is lost when you reset, change workflow or close the app; you pick a job up again with Resume.

Before you start

• Nothing to set up: saving is built in. Surveys and designs save when you name them; jobs save themselves.
• To come back to a job, it must have been graded and stopped at least once.

Time: about 5 minutes to read. Resuming a job takes about 2 minutes, plus calibrating if you need to.

What's saved, and when

While a job saves you'll see Saving job… for a second or two on long jobs. Let it finish before you switch the tablet off.

The two Resume Job lists

Each row shows the name, when it was last saved, the type, when it was created and how much coverage it holds, with Resume and a delete button. Nothing saved yet reads No saved jobs: jobs save when you stop grading.

In v1.5.4 the same job can appear twice (for example after resuming a Manual Grade or Leveling job and grading again). Pick the one with the latest Saved time.

Coming back tomorrow

Every tap, with a picture for each: Resume a job. In short:

• Ditching, Tiling and the others: there's no resume button in the start window. You open the Grade screen with nothing loaded and use its orange Resume button.
• Simple Grading, Terracing, Land Forming, Excavation: tap Resume Job in the workflow's start window.
• Then: tap Resume on your job. Calibrate GPS? appears: on another day, or if the base moved, tap Calibrate and calibrate on the field's benchmark (the button reads Calibrate to BM 2 (5s avg) with your benchmark's name; hold still 5 seconds; the status line then reads Calibrated to benchmark). Same day, same base: Skip.
• Auto-Nudge: the job comes back with coverage, worked surface, nudge and pass. Enable Auto-Nudge with the same Max Cut Per Pass keeps your pass; Use Manual Nudge puts it back to 1. Then tap Start.

The benchmark rule for coming back

Every job, survey and design is in the elevations of the base setup it was made on. Set the base up again, or move it, or restart it, and today's raw readings are all shifted by the same amount. Calibrating on a benchmark takes that shift out.

• Same day, same base setup, nothing moved: no calibration. Tap Skip if the Calibrate GPS? window appears.
• Any other day, or the base was moved, set up again, replaced or rebooted: calibrate before the first pass. Day two of a ditch, next spring's cleanout, a three-day forming job (every morning), a base that blew over.
• One benchmark per field, set the first time you work it: field entrance, culvert headwall, fence corner. Use it for everything in that field, year after year.
• No benchmark from last time? Calibrate on the loaded survey or design at a spot that hasn't been touched since. Never on ground you've already cut; on a stretch already at grade, use Design grade in the Loaded design row.

The BM badge: grey not calibrated, orange a calibration is applied. Tap it to see which: the status line reads Calibrated to … for this session or Restored from <date> for last session's offset (recalibrate). The app asks Calibrate GPS? whenever a survey, design or job comes off the tablet (Load Survey, Load Design, Resume), once per file per session; it can't tell whether the base has moved, so Skip it on the same base setup. With Field Mode on and today's calibration done on the field's benchmark, it stays quiet for files that were made on that same benchmark and asks for any other file; it also reminds you to calibrate as you enter a field (Field Mode). Every method: Benchmarks and calibration.

Start fresh without losing anything

Reset (Reset All?), tapping the active workflow card (Start New Session?) and Change Mode (Change Mode?) all clear what's loaded: the survey, design, grading progress and coverage. None of them deletes a saved survey, design or job. Which one to use.

Delete what you don't need

Surveys and designs are deleted from the Load window (Load button on the Survey screen, or Load Survey / Load Design in a workflow's start window). Jobs are deleted from the Resume Job window. Deleting can't be undone.

1. Tap the bin on the row

   Each row ends with a bin button, right of its Load or Implement button. Tap the bin on the one you want to delete.

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2. Tap Delete

   A window asks first: Delete Survey?, Delete Design? or Delete Job?, with the name and This cannot be undone. Tap Delete (red, bottom right), or Cancel to keep it.

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Where the files live

Everything is in Documents/DitchAssist/ on the tablet: surveys/, designs/ and jobs/, each in a folder per day. Exports go in exports/. Back these folders up, and copy them to a new tablet to bring your work with you.

• Folder by folder: Where the app keeps your files
• To and from a computer: Move files to and from the tablet
• A survey as XYZ or KML: Export a survey

If something goes wrong

• A job or survey is missing from the list: More.
• Nothing saves, or the lists are empty after a reinstall: storage permission. More.
• Resumed and everything is off by the same amount: calibrate. More.
• The app asks to calibrate every time I load: More.