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Tutorial — A full survey, start to finish

This walks the entire InTerra Studio workflow end to end — from an empty project to an explorable 3D model — using a real sample survey of a Jacksonville, FL site. The only thing you won't do is fly the drone: the photos and field GNSS logs are already captured for you.

You don't need a drone, field hardware, or any cloud credits. The final model build is simulated for the tutorial so it runs instantly and costs nothing; on a real job that step uploads your photos and processes them in the cloud.

Plan for about 20 minutes. Follow it straight through and you'll finish with corrected ground control, a culled photo set, tagged control points, and a 3D model you can measure — the whole shape of a survey-grade job.

Step 1 — Create the project (Project Information)

  1. On the Start window, click Create a new project.
  2. In the Create InTerra Project window, set the Project Name to Jacksonville HD. InTerra uses the name for the project folder too, created under your Root folder. Click Create.
  3. Because the name matches the tutorial, InTerra offers to download the sample dataset — the field .ubx logs and the drone images. Say yes; it's a one-time download, cached locally afterward. The project then opens in Studio with Jacksonville HD shown at the top of the window.
  4. In the Details card, set the site address to 9600 San Jose Blvd, Jacksonville, FL 32257. You don't have to type the whole thing — start typing 9600 San J, pick the full address from the top of the suggestions, and the map geocodes and zooms to the site.
  5. With the location set, the Location fields fill in automatically — and so does the Coordinate system: InTerra defaults this site to Florida East (ftUS) with orthometric heights on NAVD88 (GEOID18). That's the right system here, so leave it. Setting the address first is what lets InTerra pick the system for you — see Reference → Project Information.

Your project now has a name, a location, and the correct coordinate system.

A note on planning — Pre-Flight & Target Planning

On a real job, before you fly you'd use Pre-Flight to plan the mission (camera, height, ground sample distance) and Target Planning to lay out where your ground targets go. Because this sample is already flown, we skip straight to processing the data that came back — but it's worth knowing those tabs are the front half of the workflow. See Pre-Flight and Target Planning when you plan your own job.

Step 2 — Import the GNSS logs (Data Manager)

Back in the office, Data Manager is where your field GNSS logs become survey-grade reference data: it converts the raw .ubx logs from your SmarTarget units to RINEX for processing, and pulls CORS reference files from the NOAA servers. (In the field, SmarTarget Manager is where you'd download those .ubx logs off the units over USB — the tutorial has already staged them for you.)

Open Data Manager.

  1. Under Available UBX Files, InTerra lists the logs it found, sorted by approximate distance from the project location. The same files appear on the map as gray-and-white markers, so you can select from either the grid or the map. The tutorial set is five logs collected at the site on Feb 5, 2025, 275–631 ft from the project location: the Datum log and four SmarTarget units (InTerra2 through InTerra5). Select all five and click Add to project.
  2. The Import Files window asks whether to Move or Copy the logs into the project. Choose Copy so the originals stay in your download folder and you can run the tutorial again. (Move relocates them into the project and removes them from the download folder.)
  3. InTerra converts the logs to RINEX and adds them to the project; their map markers turn from gray-and-white to black-and-white.
  4. Now bring in the CORS reference. Open Available CORS stations, select PLTK (Palatka — about 38 mi south of the site; zoom out to see its yellow diamond on the map), and click Download and Add. InTerra fetches the PLTK RINEX from NOAA for a window covering the flight. When it's added, the diamond turns green.

Close the Available UBX and Available CORS cards to focus on what's now in the project, and glance at the Base Station info card to confirm the import.

Full detail in Reference → Data Manager.

Step 3 — Set the reference (Datum)

The Datum tab is where you refine the position of the InTerra Datum unit — the base receiver that was logging during the flight. Its raw log gives only an approximate position; processing it against a published reference fixes it precisely.

Open Datum. Because a CORS file and a Datum log are both in the project, InTerra opens ready to process the Datum against the CORS station.

For this tutorial we anchor the Datum to the PLTK CORS station. This isn't the most accurate option — a surveyed known position on your own base is — but it's the most common real-world setup, and it's how you bring a published reference into a job. (See the how-to guides for processing directly against CORS or with a surveyed known position.)

Click Process to run a PPK solution of the Datum log against PLTK. When it finishes, the Datum's solved lat / lon / height appear — notice they differ from the approximate position it started with. That solved position is now the reference your units are corrected against.

Step 4 — Process the units (Process)

Open the Process tab. You'll see your survey units (the targets), each with a Use checkbox and a status column. Make sure the units are checked, set Process against to Datum processed against PLTK, and click Run.

InTerra corrects each unit against the Datum and reports back. Watch the status column settle; each result carries a variance — a measure of how tightly the position resolved (lower is tighter; see Explanation → Variance).

You now have corrected, survey-grade ground control for the site. This is the heart of the whole survey — and on this dataset it's the real thing, not a simulation.

Step 5 — Import your imagery (Flight Review)

Open Flight Review. With no photos yet, the photo panel shows an Add photos… button — click it, browse to where the tutorial installed the photos (Documents\InTerra\Tutorial Images\Jax Images), and Copy them in. The geotag sidecar travels with the photos automatically, and InTerra projects your ground control onto the imagery as the photos load.

With the photos in, Flight Review shows your coverage / density map. Run the auto-cull to drop redundant overlapping photos while keeping full coverage — fewer photos means a faster, cheaper build with no loss of quality. See Reference → Flight Review.

Step 6 — Tag your control (Target Finder)

Open Target Finder. Here you connect the ground control you computed in Step 4 to where those targets actually appear in the photos. InTerra projects each control point onto its candidate photos and shows you where it expects the target; you confirm or nudge the exact pixel.

You don't need to tag every photo a target appears in. Tag four to six good photos per target, then stop — additional photos rarely add anything to the solution, and targets sitting near the edge of a frame are worth skipping. Tagging control to the imagery is what georeferences the model and drives its accuracy. See Reference → Target Finder.

Step 7 — Build the model (Build Model)

Open Build Model. Choose the Draft preset and click Run.

For the tutorial, InTerra simulates the cloud build — you'll see the real processing stages run, but instantly and at no cost, and the finished deliverables drop straight into your project. On your own job this step uploads your photos to the cloud and runs the full photogrammetry pipeline (minutes to hours depending on size), then downloads the results. See Reference → Build Model.

Step 8 — Explore & measure (Orbiter)

Open Orbiter to explore your results: pan and zoom the orthophoto, orbit the 3D model, toggle the elevation and other overlays, and take a measurement. This is the deliverable your client would explore. See Reference → Orbiter.

Step 9 — Your reports

InTerra generates reports from the run automatically. Open the Results report for the client-facing summary — accuracy figures, coverage, GCP residuals, and preview imagery — and the Processing report for the operator-side run diagnostics. See Reference → Reports.

What's next

You've taken a survey from an empty project all the way to a measurable 3D model. The only piece you didn't do here is the flight itself — for that, the planning tabs (Pre-Flight, Target Planning) and a field day with your SmarTargets stand in front of everything you just did.

From here, the How-to guides give step-by-step recipes for specific tasks, and the Reference has the full detail on every tab and control.