“What we’re working on is a start-to-finish Topcon solution. If you only do data prep, you get the data prep package. If you do site takeoff or road takeoff, we have different packages for that. We have workflow guides and wizards built into the program to guide you through each of those steps. Say you’re designing an access road or a highway, and you have your alignment in what is now called the survey view but will eventually be called the CAD view. Once you have your alignment, you can pick it up and switch to road view, which has very specific menus for that function and no superfluous commands. Everything you need is situated in that view and you’re not having to hunt and peck for what you need to put in a profile, pull your cross-sections, or build your template. That doesn’t mean that those commands aren’t laid out sporadically in the program in different menus, but we’ve centralized them for different applications. There’s six modes of operation when you first open the software. You click on whichever mode you want to work in. If you’re doing a site takeoff from a PDF, you click on that mode and it shrinks the menus and icons on the toolbars down to just that specific workflow and guides you through that process.
“The contractor doesn’t want a lot of bells and whistles,” says Mark Larranaga, Topcon’s software business development manager. “He doesn’t want to have to learn a bunch of commands to get a line or a contour into a drawing. Magnet Site is a very robust product, but because of the routines we use, you don’t have to make a lot of choices. We give customers the option of changing the settings and the look and feel of their software. But if all you want is the line to come in, you tell it that and you don’t have to do any more.”
For customers who don’t have the capital to invest in the software, Topcon has initiated a software leasing program. “We had customers who were buying one or two seats for their company but needed more,” says Larranaga. “Now they can lease month to month or for a term. There’s a one-month minimum and you can pay monthly or if you can project how long you’ll need it, pay in advance.
Aside from saving money, leasing provides the opportunity to use the software and evaluate if it’s for you. And when you come down to it, that’s what it’s all about.
