| |
| |
Welcome to the OptiSurface Newsletter for August 2021. I hope your year has been productive and busy as ours. See below for our latest Deals, News, Design and Feature of the Month. If you have any problems or questions please reply to this email or call us on +61 405-686-425 (Australia) or +1 870-340-2020 (USA).
| | |
| |
| | | Regards
Graeme Cox & The OptiSurface Team
DAVCO OptiSurface
Web: www.optisurface.com
News: www.twitter.com/OptiSurface
“Celebrating One Million Acres of Optimized Agricultural Earthworks”
| | | | |
P.S. If you haven’t taken advantage of OptiSurface yet, we’re offering a special service where we will take your topographic data for a field and conduct some FREE analysis and design. Go here to find out more: http://www.optisurface.com/nlt/
| | |
| |
| |
| |
OptiSurface@OptiSurface · May 10
OptiSurface Design Example: Egyptian Center Pivot Field smoothed to promote uniform field operations & maximum slope limited to minimize runoff and allow irrigator trafficability and minimum slope to eliminate depressions.
| | |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
OptiSurface@OptiSurface · May 31
OptiSurface in French Vegetable/Grain Field thanks to Pierre Douineau: “Design was made for a farmer with typical crops (cabbage, potato) or big crop wheat, corn. Problem was areas of water stagnation. Goal: move as little soil as possible, have beautiful crops throughout. | | |
| |
OptiSurface @OptiSurface · Jun 7
Nice newspaper advert by Vantage BMS promoting dryland drainage from GPS landforming and OptiSurface. | | |
| |
Precision landforming is critical to efficient furrow irrigation. Here growing sugar cane at DAVCO Farming, NQld, Australia | | |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| | | | | Share photos of your designs or field work on social media outlets like Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn and tag us with @OptiSurface. Each month we will select the best post and send you a $50 Amazon Gift Card. Congratulations to Henk and Hamis, our winners for this month!
| | | | |
| |
| |
| |
Macadamia trees are native to Australia and found naturally on well drained rainforest Ferrosols. As Salt Spray Farm is so close to the sea, with heavy clay often lying within half a meter of the surface, there was a requirement to think outside the box when it came to growing macadamias on this farm. “Neighbours warned us about exposing the clay subsoil,” recalled Mr Commens, and 30 pits dug across 60ha indeed revealed that the excellent dark, clay loam was often just 250mm deep, followed by either clay or white sand. “We wanted to make sure to keep that soil and not waste it,” said Mr Commens. “We didn’t want to shift good soil on top of more good soil and expose, in other places, the poor substrate.” | | |
| |
| |
The solution came from OptiSurface, based in Queensland, whose innovative software has been used to design more than one million acres of land across Australia, North America, Africa, South America, Europe and Russia. This was the first known macadamia plantation application. OptiSurface modelled and analysed the field topography based on a GPS field survey. The software optimise the topography to achieve minimum and maximum slopes with least possible earthworks, using “Continuously Variable Grades”. The OptiSurface 2Way Surface Type was used to design the field. This surface type lets water drain away from the ridge subzones (see red lines in Proposed Topography) to the edges of the fields or a defined cross drain, following the planting direction. Previously, there were many ditches that split the farm into smaller fields. Most of these were eliminated to maximize the crop area and mechanize farming efficiency. The image above shows the Existing Topography map with several ditches. The proposed design below shows most of these filled in and the Continuously Variable Grades across the field draining in the direction of the tree rows. | | |
| |
| |
|
Most of the existing ditches are filled up and 10,000 m³ of soil was imported to lift up low lying areas as shown in the Cut/Fill Map below. Calculated earthworks (cut volume) on average was only 309 m³/ha.
| | |
| |
| |
The result is a subtle variation in the field topography, allowing surface water to exit the paddock slowly and in a non erosive fashion. The method shifts up to 80% less soil compared to traditional laser-levelling. Of course the lower earthworks enabled by the use of OptiSurface and RTK Global Positioning System machine control technology, makes each cubic meter of soil moved slightly more expensive – but the total job it is still far cheaper than “conventionally” laser-graded paddock. However, the biggest benefit is not moving as much precious topsoil. | | |
See more details of this case study here. | | |
| |
| |
| Overview: Subzones can apply different design parameters to different areas within a boundary zone. Where a subzone exists and parameters are defined, that value will overwrite the design parameters of the boundary zones. The design parameters are mapped onto the calculation grid points that fall within that subzone. Subzones can overlap each other. Where they overlap, their ranking in the priority list defines which design parameter is actually sent to the OptiSurface Calculation Engine. These settings tell the OptiSurface Calculation Engine what characteristics or properties the proposed design surface should have.
Displayed by: Menu: Tools > New Design Zone
Toolbar: | | |
| |
| |
| |
Subzone Parameters
- Max. Cross/Main Slope Ratio: Defines the ratio of cross slope to main slope of any calculation grid point covered by the subzone.
- Max. Allowable Elevation (m or ft): Defines the maximum elevation of any calculation grid point covered by the subzone.
- Min. Allowable Elevation (m or ft): Defines the minimum elevation of any calculation grid point covered by the subzone.
- Min. Cut (m or ft): Defines the minimum depth of soil that can be removed (cut) from any grid point covered by the subzone.
- Max. Cut (m or ft): Defines the maximum depth of soil that can be removed (cut) from any grid point covered by the subzone.
- Min. Fill (m or ft): Defines the minimum depth of soil that can be removed (cut) from any grid point covered by the subzone.
- Max. Fill (m or ft): Defines the maximum depth of soil that can be added (filled) an any grid point covered by the subzone.
| | |
|
Example:
In the Design of the Month shown above, the boundary settings is shown below. An import of 10,000 m³ was added to lift low lying areas. This soil is taken from the drain in the middle as it will be expanded to become water storage as well.
| | |
| |
| The green subzone called ‘LowTopSoil’ has the maximum cut set to 0.10m as shown below. This tells OptiSurface that the maximum cut on the area covered by the subzone is only 100mm and, therefore, to satisfy the minimum slope of 0.10% this area will need to be lifted up. | | |
| |
| This is the reason why most of the imported soil is used as fill in the green subzone as shown in the Cut/Fill map above. | | |
| | | | Give a friend $200 off OptiSurface and get rewarded with $200 Amazon Gift Card yourself! Start Here. | | | | |
| |
We have clients looking for experienced earthmoving operators in Africa, France, Australia and USA. If you’re interested, contact support@optisurface.com | | |
| |
To subscribe to our newsletter, click HERE. If you have already done this and didn’t receive the newsletter in your email inbox, check your spam/junk folder. | | |
DAVCO OptiSurface Pty Ltd, 70 Bosun Pde, Gold Coast Queensland 4214, Australia — Unsubscribe | | |
Leave A Response
You must be logged in to post a comment.