When opening a saved FWD, I am receiving a pop-up error stating, "One or more target heights missing from file". What is this error and what is its effect on the survey data?
This alert means nothing and doesn’t affect anything with the fwd. It is not an error message or warning message, but merely a prompt in the program to tell the user there could potentially be missing data. In the case where all points are fixed, there is nothing that the target height controls and this value becomes null and void because the information is not calculated based on a target height.
Note: This message is also commonly seen when importing TDS RW5 and RAW files. For these files, the message is intended to advise users that some records in the raw file do not have target heights. Users importing TDS RW5 or RAW data however, almost always get this message during import because no target height is recorded with thebacksight (BK) records. Since this is a horizontal only record, most collectors don't even prompt for the IH, HR until after the BK record. Therefore, when InRoads brings in the first backsight on all of the stations in the file, there is no target height, and the warning displays.
1. Toggle the option for InRoads to not show this alert message unless the Shift key is held down.
2. In the extreme case where you cannot toggle this option on because you do not have any write permissions to the registry, the user can manually go into the FWD and add a target height to each of their backsight points (which would create faulty and erroneous data) simply to bypass the alert message. This is not a feasible solution but is an option if you are working with all fixed points because the program will not calculate anything from the backsight target height because the coordinates are fixed on all the points.