n4ce 4.40d December 2025 Update Notes

Download 4.40d here: n4ce_4.40d_Dec_19th_2024_Installer_Signed.msi

New:

General:

• There is now a Python interpreter built into n4ce for running Python scripts to interact with data in n4ce.
• A Speckle connector has been built into n4ce for uploading model data to Speckle.
• New option to straighten lines between where indicated features cross it.  Intended for straightening over head wires between many km of gantries. (Pro, Des)
• New Zoom to Chainage option has been added to the Model views.  So if an alignment is in the backcloth, it’s possible to zoom to a specific chainage.
• New right click option on a Total Station setup to move it to the top of the list of setups.
• New options have been added to Stations and Coordinate blocks to scale points about an indicated origin.
• When importing alignments from LandXML, a new dialog helps to select which designs to import.
• New option in section views to toggle the zero chainage to the left option for cross sections.
• New option when densifying line features to have no point style using a comma 0.
• New option to export 2D polylines as AutoCAD light weight polylines has been included.
• New option in CAD lines to simplify selected lines using the DP method, follows pick mode.
• New option in CAD lines to filter lines on top of each other.  The longer line will be kept.
• When reading Topcon TP3 projects, the points and line work are now imported into a separate model.
• New option in DTM Tools to burn text into a hatch from the dedicated CAD backloth.
• New option to place all model text into a block when exporting to DXF/DWG. Helps when exporting to Trimble Machine control which does not like lots of individual items of text.
• New option when importing DXF/DWG to purge symbols after the CAD has been loaded.
• When creating a Cant and Gauge Report, the Twist along the rail is now also displayed. (Designer)
• TC= can be used as an attribute to change the colour of 3pt Text. E.g. TC=Blue..
• New dimension for symbols, default B=, which rotates non-aligned, 1-point symbols to a bearing.
• New option in DWG export to export pipes and manholes as 3D polyface meshes.
• Update to the DWG export dialog so that all settings are on one page.
• New option -V in the command line of n4ce forces it to act as a viewer only.
• New option for Rail Versines which creates a report along a string using fixed chord lengths.(Designer)
• New option to add a datum dimension to a CAD model assume north is vertical.
• New alignment for feature text, "Parallel Auto" which will make text look better around buildings. Next to the Alignment drop down is a Deflection field, which is for all text.  This is the maximum deflection above which trailing or leading are used.
• When using Region control to split up complicated volumes.  A new option allows the results to be compiled into a single table. Rather than a series of separate ones.
• A new option for EACSD section photograph files to be cross-referenced from photo points.
• The option to export a model to LandXML now gives you options  as to the data to export.
• New option in CAD dimensions for Orthogonal offsets from a user defined base line.
• New options in the Railway options allow you to create a centre line string using three height options. (Designer)
• New option to transform the points of a model by using the coordinates in a survey matched by point number.
• New Transform option to convert back and forward between OS and Highways England Grids
• New Python API for connecting n4ce Models to other applications with a Python API.
• New Option to export image hyperlinks as a full path or just the file name when exporting to DWG.

3d Viewer:

• Leica LGSx file support added for point clouds and 360 imagery including .
• Elevations from multi segment lines.
• Export Long Images derived from a long 3d feature line.
• Point can be moved in either X-Y axis, or just Z to adjust their position.
• New Rail Templates tool for measuring clearances for the Feature Extraction Bolt On
• New ICP tool for extracting accurate rail string for the Feature Extraction Bolt On.
• New Road IRI road roughness tool for the Feature Extraction Bolt On
• 3d Meshing in Designer versions has been made faster.
• The circle picker has been migrated into n4ce Pro.
• New Grade between points tool has been added under the Editing tab to linearly interpolate levels between points.
• New Straighten between points tool has been added under the Editing tab to linearly straighten the plan position of points, between two indicated points.

Improvements:

General

• Points can be moved to another surface, but a new option allows this to only be done if the new height is within a given distance of the current height.  Allows points to be moved to the tops of a kerb in a point cloud, but not to the tops of any over hanging trees.
• Alignments can now be coped by indicating them in a Backcloth.
• New option in a Model to generate points at the intersection of CAD lines in a backcloth.
• When indicating segments to make parallel and/or perpendicular, you now indicate near the end to move, rather than relying on the direction of the feature.
• When importing Xpad RAW GPS readings, any point with a type GPS_BASE is now ignored.
• The AutoSave now works on a read only file although you'd have to Save As to keep changes.
• The import and export of text line styles to AutoCAD DWG has now been updated and improved to deal with units and spacing issues.
• Option for rectangle from 2-pt feature now asks for the side to create the rectangle
• The line styles dialog now allows multi-select so deletion and changes on mass is made much easier.
• New button in line styles dialogs to allow a scale to be applied to the selected line styles.
• When importing from Leica XML files, you now have the option whether to imported uncoded points as stations or not.
• When creating EACSD sections, base lines are now checked to have at least 2 points.
• You can now import a CSV file that only contains latitude and longitude.
• When projecting CAD lines perp to ref, it now chooses the solution closest to the indicated point.
• Units can now be displayed in the string and section volumes as well as contour areas tables.
• When positioning a viewport using the tracker rectangle, locking modes are honoured for corners and sides.
• When extending line features to a reference, the reference can now be picked from the backcloth.
• When generating from text, the Extract from Text option has been removed as was same as Text Value anyway.
• DTM triangles can now be smoothed, and also by group.
• Extending 3d Features to CAD Shapes and Circles has been added.
• Units such as US_SurveyFeet  have been added to CSV import\export as well as DWG import\export.

3d Viewer:

• • Feature Extraction Template tool has been updated to allow multiple runs with different setting so that n4ce will store the best results at each location.  Therefore allowing for much better extractions.
  • When grouping points in a point cloud.  Buttons can now be added to the view to allow rapid changing of the target group.

Bugs:

• If comma codes were added as part of the code in a JXL file, they were not assigned to the point on import.
• When importing from X-PAD RAW files, comments were all added to the last point and reading.
• When creating a Prism volume table, checking Areas off did not disable the Slope Areas check.
• Zero height set when sectioning through the last segment of a curving features.
• When loading a project with reference models, checking for the dedicated CAD backcloth may have caused a corruption.
• The CC= dimension for comma codes was not recognised in Trimble JXL files.
• The option to group select by string side chose some edge triangles that it shouldn't have.
• When importing DWG splines, if in millimetres, the spline calculation produce very small splines.
• When creating a new layer, the check for a duplicate name caused a crash.
• When applying offsets in Leica XML, they were not read in when some readings were from AP20.
• Exporting text frames to DWG in mm did not adjust the size of the frame correctly.
• In the codetable when entering field values, a .0 was added to the end of the field even if it wasn't a number.
• When importing a JXL file with distanceoffset nodes, the V= dimension was coming in as H=.
• When calculating intersections, the display of the block of coordinates is updated.
• The option to export Mtext for multiple text lines should now work correctly.
• GridInquest now transforms to and from Irish TM and Irish Grid correctly.
• When exploding symbols that were mirrored in the x-axis, the mirroring was lost.

January 2024 Service update:

New:

• X-Ray image tool for helping to draw floor plans from point clouds.

Improvements:

• The option to shift points vertically by their Dz Average has been extended to 2d Point transformations and not just for Stations.
• When extending a feature to a reference, you can now opt to not plot the height of the point that was extended.

Bugs:

• 4pt Steps tool was missing from the Classic UI
• Tools for moving and aligning layouts were not correctly wired into their respective menus.
• During a fresh installation the License Manger did not allow the user to exit.
• 3d Rectangular String Shapes were not able to be used to check point cloud tolerance.
• Advance to Node had stopped working when using a Feature to define a section in the 3d Viewer.
• Rectangular shapes could be exported incorrectly to DWG if point makers were turned off.
• Frozen and Off layers were not loaded when importing DWG and DXF files.
• Triangles generated when inserting features into a DTM, could not be grouped due to an indexing issue.

n4ce 4.40c December Update Release Notes 

New:

• Trimble Connect cloud storage can now be accessed directly from within n4ce. Click here for more info.
• A Brand new least squares network engine has been developed.  The classic one is still available, but the new one is much faster and allows for observations to be selected or not from the Map view, rather than having to quit out of the engine and edit the raw observations in the n4ce project manager first. Its function is much the same as the old one so it shouldn’t take long at all to become familiar with it. Click here for more info.
• When Transforming Stations using the “Coordinates 2d” tool, there is a new option to also shift the height of the stations vertically by the average of all the Delta heights.  A report is also included after the adjustment to document by how much the stations have moved in the Z axis. Click here for more info.
• A new Steps from a 4pt line tool has been added to the Features tab\menu in a Model view. Click here for more info.
• When working in CAD with no command active, if multiple elements are on top of each other are clicked on a new list will appear to allow the intended line to be selected to change its properties. In time this will be extended to all picking commands.
• New tool to place images with an arrow to the point it was stored against. Click here for more info.
• Custom UCS’s are now supported as well as reading them from DWG files. If a Current UCS us detected in an imported DWG you are given the option to keep it, or revert back to the standard WCS.
• A new option called Text from Tables has been added to the Points Generate menu. This can convert text tables of easting, northing height etc… to coded xyz points. Click here for more info.
• When plotting Volume tables that involve groups, a new option allows a colour swatch to be added next to the name of the group.
• When plotting Group Keys, a new option for the text colour, called Foreground colour will use the foreground colour of the group for the text of that group.
• New Square Shape Type, using Mid points of opposite sides.
• New Rectangle Shape Type, using Center point, side mid point, and a third anywhere on the other side.
• New option when back clothing a Model into an Alignment to turn an indicated feature string in the backcloth into an Alignment.
• New option to allow all annotation on a given point in a specified direction.
• New option to slide and rotate all annotation on a selected point.
• New Translate option when right clicking the Code column in a Model grid view.  It essentially allows the user to setup a series of codes that need to be translated to another code.  If say a client sends data that needs a series of search and replaces done on it.  This can do the same in one operation.  Once the translation table is set up. So, if you had BB01, BB02, BB03, etc and you wanted to translate them to BD01, BD02, BD03, etc, you'd set BB as the old prefix and select BD from the list of existing prefixes. The translations that are available are stored as .cpt files in the Templates directory.
• Survey observations can now be exported to CSV files.
• Survey points can now be aligned to the direction of their annotation.
• New option when looking at the layers of a CAD model in the Project Manager to delete all empty layers.
• When reducing Survey Observations a new check box is available to control whether the forward calculation of the next station should use the DeltaZ and Plan Distance components of the Back Sight assuming its to this station to average the derived Level and position (Basically doing what an Open traverse calc would do).
• When exporting to 2d DWG files, a new option to also place the Markers.SHX file next to the DWG has been added.  This allows AutoCAD to easily pickup the shx file and plot the line styles correctly.
• A new option has been added to the Number and Code tabs of the Codetable to plot Remarks instead.  Allows the remark to be plotted directly without needing to use %REM% in the Text box if Text is Enabled.
• A new field has been added to the Section Profiles tab when plotting sections to override the chainage starting value.
• New option in the Ribbon bar interface called “Wide Lines” will automatically make all lines use the new Wide Line width setting in the Pen Defaults dialog. Help to make lines easier to see on screen when there is an image in the background.
• Multiple parallel lines can be added in the field via new attributes P1= P2= P3= and so on.  The first MUST be P= then the others MUST follow in order if used.
• Trimble FXL code export now supports simple shape types and code groups.
• New option to import the raw rather than adjusted obs in JXL files where offsets have been applied.
• New setting under Observation settings to just use ,C but on import change the first and last to ,T so the curves are started and ended tangentially, without needing to change the comma code on the instrument. So CCCC will come in as TCCT.
• New tools in a Model to Move Shapes and Features.
• New option when querying a line feature to Zoom To the highlighted point in the list.
• New option in DTM Edit to identify and fill all holes in the DTM with triangles.
• New options in the 3d View to import 360 Panoramic Images in Trimble and Realworks CSV formats.
• New option in the 3d view to move a feature, and to also set it’s heights to the point cloud.
• New option in the Properties of a point cloud to Hide Far Points.  So points a given distance from a scan location can be hidden.  Helps clean up the view as only data close to each scan is displayed.
• Feature Curving, Paralleling, Densifying and ZigZag filtering have all been added to the Editing tab in the 3d Viewer.

Improvements:

• Group keys are now an option to plot for Volume and Area tables.
• A new toggle in the Groups menu\tab allows an indicated group to be switched off, or back on again if its already off, if a triangle with that group is clicked on.
• An additional option has been added to the Points generate from Contours option called Sequential.  This just needs the starting value and the interval -ve or negative, to generate contours from polylines cut with a strike line.
• An input box has been added to the Dimensions Settings dialog accessed from the codetable so that if n4ce sees any of the text in that box the attributes will be ignored when importing raw data files from survey instruments. E.g. 0 ? or –
• N4ce recognises if Leica AP20 data has been offset via the instruments Offsets options.
• Notes added to points in XPAD are now imported as Remarks.
• The CSV export of codes to XPAD has improved colour support.
• When exporting codes to XPAD you are given the option of adding StNocCode and Remark attributes to each code.  Thus making it much easier to add String Numbers, Comma Codes and Remarks.
• If a Remark has an = in for XPAD, it is treated as an attribute.
• Images are now recognised when coming in from XPAD via the Point number in the jpg name.
• DTM smoothing of large surface models has been hugely sped up.
• Attributes in XPAD RAW files set to 0 are now ignored.
• An option is now provided to also import original GNSS readings and not just the resulting average when loading XPAD RAW files.
• GNSS readings in XPAD RAW files are now converted to XYZ on import.
• For XPAD Parallel attributes. / can now be used as a separator instead of a comma. Eg. P=0.1/BB/0.25.
• Attributes are now added to ICON Code exports.
• Comma codes TS,TS,CS,CE for Tangent Start, Tangent End, etc… Are now supported in JXL.  So no additional C comma codes are needed. Put a TS or CS where the curve starts, and then a TE or CE on the end of the curve, and in between points will be curved automatically on import of the JXL.
• #P or -P will close a feature in JXL filles.
• The Trimble #J directive to join points to each other is now supported for JXL files.
• The directive -CC can be used in JXL files to assign any comma code.  For example -CC N would add a ,N.  Or -CC TS would add a ,TS for Tangent Start.
• New option in Designer for plotting shapes for hogging and sagging in Alignment sections, instead of just saying hogging and sagging.
• Symbols that are accidentally deleted from a project are now highlighted in a CAD model or Drawing so the reference to them can also be removed.
• Groups can now be added to a model based on a Design String chainage.
• Volumes now report plan and slope areas.
• When displaying a drawing or exporting to DWG, if the option to align text/symbols is checked, all text can be adjusted.
• Check shots in Leica HeXML are now identified as control readings.
• 3pt lines can now be converted to 4pt Rectangles supporting the List pick mode.
• When creating formation model from group depths. Where group depths differ along a common boundary the edge strings are duplicated for each group.  There by diving each depth its own boundary.
• Tree Canopies can now be generated from 4 attributes North=, East=, South= West=.
• Converting Arcs to Lines in CAD now works in Rectangle pick mode.
• Multiple page PDFs can now be imported to CAD in one go.
• When importing Magnet MXL data, the vertical angles are now converted to the observation settings vertical circle. This is for Magnet v6 onwards.  v5 uses up 0, hz 90, whereas later versions use up 90, hz 0.
• When committing Group Boundaries to CAD, the same boundarys can also be committed to a Coordinate block.
• Opacity for point clouds has been improved to remove flickering.
• Brightness of a point cloud can be adjusted in a point clouds properties.
• Noise filter in 3d view for point clouds has been improved.
• 3d Objects can now be assigned to codes under the Symbols tab and then visualised in the 3d view.
• Clipping box can me moved in the 3d view.  So when clipping out cars for instance in a point cloud, the box can just be moved to the next car, and does not need to be totally redefined.
• When digitising from a point cloud, active comma codes are also shown on the current codes description.
• Backcloth button has been added to the Home tab in the 3d View.
• 3d Meshing from point clouds has been highly sped up.
• 3d Pipes generated live via R= or D= attributes can now be used for design checks against a point cloud, just like a normal 3d Model.

Bug Fixes:

• Live sections on Grid DTMS could of caused a crash.
• A line was missing from Trimble FXL Code library files that stopped them being imported into Trimble applications.
• Height Annotation colours could be wrong due to the missing Layer Colour setting,
• Solid filled lines were not rendered correctly if they were curved in a CAD model.
• When loading an ECW as a backcloth, the extents of the view may not have been set correctly.
• Tool to raise CAD elements to a Height is now working properly.
• Layer snapshots were not loaded properly for CAD and Drawings.
• Scaleable linetypes such as hedges were not committed to CAD at the correct scale, when manually committed.
• Drainage Section Symbols were not being plotted on the section.
• Resection and back Bearings in Magnet XML files were not imported.
• When selecting models for datum projection volumes, models in folders could not be selected.
• OSGB mesh files were not imported correctly into the 3d view.
• Some Tiff files were not imported upside down. Converting to ECW was fine though.