Before starting I suggest that you first open the ag3 file in Topcon agform-3d to look at what you are actually importing. The free trial version contains everything you need. Here is a sample job:
We can see that we have design contours. Also the data appears to be in a local coordinate system rather than WGS84 or State Plane. In this case it is important to check that we have at least two benchmarks with lat/lons so that we can later georeference the job. This is important if you want to export the data to a Trimble FL2, Agguide or some other system. In Agform click on Field -> List (benchmarks). In this case we have three benchmarks with appropriate values for lat/longs.
At present Ezigrade can import the benchmarks, natural surface and the design and cut/fill surfaces in the job. Ap present we can't pick up directly any landmark points, strings and the section lines defining the design areas. However we now have a workaround for this. In Agform there is an option to export a Google KML file. Create this file from the Exchange -> Google menu item.
We now open Ezigrade and from File -> New menu create an empty job.
Now go Import -> AG3. Browse to the ag3 file to import. We get the following dialog. You would normally accept this so hit "OK".
We should now get a representation of the job in Ezigrade. Create design contours from the Contour -> Form Contours menu item.
Make sure it agrees with the original in Agform-3d.
At present the job is still in local coordinates. We should have the information available to transform it to WGS84.
In Ezigrade click on Tools -> Local Transform and we have this after pressing the "Check" button:
Check the scale and rotation make sense which they do here so press OK. I now suggest that you go to File -> Geoid and check that UTM zone number makes sense and we are in the correct hemisphere.
I would now do an export -> Google Earth to check everything looks right.
As mentioned before we didn't pickup the section lines which can be handy. As mentioned before in Agform-3D do an Exchange -> Google Earth (to 3rd party) and display this in Google Earth as well as a check. It looks Ok here.
So now in Ezigrade go to Import -> KML and import the KML file we created from Agform3D.
If we just show the strings we have this:
The KML file created contains existing and design contours as well as the section lines. We dont want these contour strings so the best this is to simply don't display them. Go to the view -> strings menu and untick the contours:
We now have the job in a form suitable to export to Trimble Civic, Agguide or Trimble FL2.
Here are some miscellanous hints:
When importing the ag3 sometimes the design triangles are doubled up or wrong. In this case there is an option to put individual triangle surfaces in Agform3D to create individual surfaces in Ezigrade.
Within Agform3D you have the option to export the control points as a gc3 file. You can also export individual section designs as tn3 files. And as shown above you can also get strings etc from a KML file. So in Ezigrade you could import the gc3, tn3 files and kml without using the import ag3 option at all.
