Hey all,
Use my referral link for 500 free credits
https://manus.im/invitation/PJFPBDXRK8HQ
I've been diving into Manus AI the last few days and it's really got me intrigued.
I've been attending Nova Scotia Community College since September taking a Survey Technician Course. I'm finding it quite interesting now that I'm well into the program and it's a trade that has many of the things I enjoy incorporated into the work.
Being outside, drawing, precision calculation, design, problem solving, construction; all wrapped into the work. As the course progresses it will also lead into Lidar, 3D mapping, drone flying, photogrammetry and the like. Technology driven measuring is really the way it's going these days.
One thing I'm not a big fan of as I get into this trade is the subscription model. It's just killing me how much I'm going to be expected to subscribe to in order to make use of all these tools.
Just to name a few, you've got:
AutoCAD subscription
Carlson 3D subscription
Survey Licenses
Cellular RTK Subscriptions
Just about every company has an app they'll sell you for a monthly fee.
It seems like there are subscriptions for every little program you want to do a specific task and it's really uninspiring. I'm sure land surveyors of the old days were not hampered by tens-of-thousands in dollars every year in subscriptions.
Anyway, I found myself really leaning into AI for a number of various reasons. Need a quick calculation of chains, rods, and poles converted to meters? No problem, throw it into an AI and there's no searching. Got a math problem that's giving you trouble? Throw it into AI and it will explain the whole process to you. Copilot even has a "learn" setting so it doesn't have to just spit out the answer, but will take the time to ask you questions and guide you through any process. No need to spend time hunting down any staff for most issues as an AI probably can get you an answer fairly quick and do a better job explaining things.
What really got me into it was we were given this assignment to create a chain of title on a property. Our goal was to go back through the deeds as far as we could and determine who owned the property at what time. This isn't too bad a task in Nova Scotia, until you get back to about 1930 and earlier. From there, the deeds are poorly scanned versions of hand written cursive pages using archaic legalese text and are really, really hard to read.
Have a look and let me know if you can make this deed from 1897 out:
Even if you can make out the words, the text itself is something like:
NOW THIS INDENTURE WITNESSETH THAT IN CONSIDERATION of One and fifty dollars of lawful money of Canada now paid by the Assignee to the Assignors, the receipt whereof is hereby acknowledged, the Assignors do hereby assign and set over unto the Assignee, her Executors, Administrators and Assigns, all the said before inpart recited Mortgage and also the said sum of $3500.00 and interest thereon as aforesaid, together with all monies that may hereafter become due or owing in respect of the said Mortgage and the full benefit of all powers and of all covenants and provisos in the said Mortgage, and also full power and authority to use the name or names of the Assignors, their Heirs, Executors, Administrators, Successors or Assigns, for enforcing the performance of the covenants and other matters and things in the said Mortgage; and the Assignors do hereby grant and convey unto the Assignee, her heirs and assigns,
ALL and singular the land and premises situate, lying and being at Auburn, in the County of Kings, in the Province of Nova Scotia, and bounded and described as follows:
I don't know about you, but reading through this text using this kind of language for 50-60 pages of deeds like this is not the best use of my time.
AI had no problem with it though. I was able to feed an AI all the documents I'd collected and it transcribed them for me into usable text I could then use to make my final report. Not too bad and it saved me quite a few hours. And, once the AI had all the information, I was able to refer back and ask it questions about the text to help narrow down timelines, ownership, and even eliminate deeds that weren't relevant.
While doing these types of projects I eventually came across Manus. It's since been bought out by Meta, which is concerning, but they haven't been able to go in and change much yet for the worse. What Manus is good at is creating things. Other AI's are good at producing text and images, sure, but Manus is good at producing whole documents and it does a pretty good job over some of the others.
I've had the opportunity to get a few PowerPoints done with it, like I said, but what has been bothering me for a while was angle calculations.
192° 56' 22.00" + 35° 34' 53.00" = 228° 31' 15.00"
I am constantly finding myself running to get my calculator because there doesn't seem to be a better way to get Degrees-Minutes-Seconds angles into anything else out there. Want to know what the sum of two angles are? Get your calculator or get your pen and paper cause doing it in your head is not always straight forward.
And then you try doing it with quadrant bearings:
S 12° 56' 22.00" W + N 35° 34' 53.00" E = S 48° 31' 15.00" W
I spent the last few nights looking for phone and computer apps to help with these specific calculations, but there is not a lot of options out there. I've found a few neat little tools while looking, but nothing seemed it could do a straightforward DMS angle calculation quickly.
So I asked Manus if it could create me a quick calculator for some of the more common tasks I found myself running to the calculator for. It was able to very quickly produce me an app that, almost immediately, did exactly what I was looking for. The problem is, once it got started and produced something good, I would have more and more ideas to add to it to make it a truly useful product. So I'm a few days in and I'm really impressed with how it's progressing.
And just to be clear, I have just about zero programming skills. I've always wished I could program something, but I usually get stuck on the most basic of problems and there always seems to be a roadblock to progressing any ideas.
AI definitely seems to be a game changer in that respect. I was able to make a useful app just from describing what I want and it's doing a really good job. So with a good head start on something I've already been able to use for my course, I'm trying to develop this into something others in my class would find useful as well.
I ended up buying a month of Manus Pro because I was impressed with the free version, but again this is another subscription. Doing that though, I was really able to lean into the enhancement of my app, but after a few days of pretty heavy work, Manus has run out of credits for the month. It regenerates 300 a day now until the end of the month when I'll get another 8000 more and can do another heavy run at development, but I've got something solid enough that it will serve it's purpose and not worth spending more money on credits aside from the monthly subscription right now.
But then I though in the meantime I could share the referral link here in an attempt to earn a few more credits before the month is up. A referral or two would help me quickly correct the odd tweak over the next 13 days while waiting for the bigger chunk of credits.
https://manus.im/invitation/PJFPBDXRK8HQ
If you've never signed up to Manus AI before, doing so with this link will give you and I extra 500 free credits each for the referral.
If you can spare a few minutes to sign up, it would be greatly appreciated and would be helping me further progress the app that will help in my school work.
Here are some screenshots of what I've got so far:
The homepage has just been implemented today as more of a card selection depending on the calculation. As I add more features, this page will expand to include all calculations pages.
Simple Curve:
This is what got things going. I found myself constantly doing multiple equations to get certain numbers for curves. The app was designed so I can put in 2 or 3 known values and the app will calculate the rest of the information and provide complete curve calculation results.
You simply enter the numbers you know, such as the angle and radius:
And the rest of the missing values will be calculated:
Below that, the curve will be displayed so you can get a quick visual to confirm it looks about what it should. You can also zoom in and pan this little graphic to get a closer look.
And from there you can calculate stakeout points so the curve can be laid out on the ground (pictured below).
That's a good 20-30 minutes of work saved instead of doing all those calculations by hand for one curve. And from there, any one of these values can be copied just by clicking on it, and copied to wherever it may be needed, or the whole set of values can be copied and pasted. All calculations also go to a history page for bulk exporting that I'll discuss later.
Moving over to the angle calculator, this will save me a ton of time. This little thing will simply add or subtract angles, displaying the values in a variety of formats commonly used in the industry.
The result is simultaniously copied to the first field so you can quickly continue adding or subtracting angles, which is handy for a variety of surveying applications. This calculator also has the feature to flip the answers 180 degrees, which is also used quite often.
The triangle calculator is next:
It will take any 3 known numbers and produce the 3 missing numbers using SINE or COSINE laws formulas. It will also display the triangle for a visual check, saves the data in the history, and allows for copying of individual or group results. I can't tell you how many times I've had to draw out little triangle diagrams and write out these formulas just to get the length of one side.
Next is a simple angle converter. We quite regularly get data that is given in different formats. There is Decimal Degrees (DD), which is a little more common in computer applications, but a little more difficult to use with some of the equipment that uses Degrees, Minutes, and Seconds (DMS) numbers.
I've also implemented a compact DMS system, where you can use a degree with 4 decimals (e.g. 45.3424) to represent D.MS numbers and is very fast to enter. The results can be copied individually or as a group and will save a tone of time not having to do a 3 step math problem or open and Excel spreadsheet to figure it out.
There is a preset page set up with some generic curves, but I'd like to do some more work on that. It's still in its early stages and I'm not sure how useful this will actually be in it's current state.
The history page is going to be useful when it's finished. Manus already has a plan to dive into this and create some impressive features, but will use a number of credits so I'll hold off for now. All calculations are saved here and they will be able to be selected to be loaded back to their applicable page, or exported in bulk. There will also be a plan to create projects and organize these calculations for better management to keep applicable data grouped together for later reference.
I'm going to use the help page a lot during my schooling. It's got a tone of the most common formulas in there for a quick way to refresh your memory if you need to do any calculations by hand. I regularly found myself searching back through my notes for formulas and now I have most of them added in one spot. I'll be able to keep expanding this and will eventually make it searchable, as well as maybe implement each one to be it's own calculator where you just have to enter the missing variables.
And finally I've got a simple settings page to switch back and forth between some different formats. This will be expanded as I add more and more features but is working pretty good for what I need right now.
I'm not quite ready to release the app publicly yet, but I'll do so here after it's gone through some more testing and improvements so anybody that's interested can try it out. Once it expands, I may list it on Google Play Store for a few dollars since there doesn't seem to be anything like this out there and I'm sure I'll recoup some of the subscription costs. Whatever I decide to do, it won't be to charge a subscription for this.
But before I get to any of that, I'll need more credits. So if you could help me out, here's that link again:
