Skip to main content

Blade Shift

The blade shift buttons allow you to manually shift the height of the blade; up, down, or rotate it (for cross-slope control). You can also limit the depth of cut and fill with blade limits.

To use it, click the "Blade shift" button.

Apply Window ➛ Blade shift ➛ Locating blade shift.png

Breakdown of the UI

Blade viewimage.png

Blade limit: Allows you to set limits on the blade relative to the As Applied surface.

Show control profile: Shows or hides the "control profile" display (see right).

Control profile: A display that shows you all the stats about what is happening with the control loop. For example, the position of your blade relative to the design surface.

  • Design is the what the goal is to hit - the design surface. This is labeled with its absolute elevation.
  • Target is what the ECU is currently targeting. In this case it's been blade shifted by -3cm so it's showing below design. It will also display the effect of a blade limit when applicable. If there was no shifts or limits present then it would match Design. This is what all of the other UI displays as the goal - not necessarily the design (On-grade indicator, side view and behind view)
  • Current is the current height of the blade/implement, relative to the design surface.
  • Original is the elevation before any earth was moved, relative to the design surface.

Up/Down: Will adjust your targeted blade height by the blade shift increment. 

Blade shift: This text-box shows the current shift. Tapping on it will allow entry of a specific shift value.

To slope: This will let you change from nudging up/down to editing cross slope.image.png Only present if you have a cross slope capable setup.  

Slope view

Auto: Allows one to turn on/off the automatic control of cross-slope. If in "auto" (see screenshot) the cross-slope will be controlled by the design surface's slope.

Up/Down: Will adjust your targeted blade height by the X Slope shift increment. Will be disabled if in Auto.

Slope: This text-box shows the current target x slope. Tapping on it will allow exact entry of a desired slope. Will be disabled if in Auto.

To Shift: This switches back from editing cross-slope to editing blade shift.

Advice on how to use Blade shift

When using blade-shift it's important to know that the design won't be affected and therefore if used consistently, it's expected that the as-applied display will never be on-target. Ie, if shifted up by 2 inches for the entire duration of the job, the as-applied would be 2 inches above design and show that the desired design hasn't been completed.

Blade Shift is generally used in one of two ways:

  1. It can be used to limit the cut depth which T3RRA will try to reach in a heavy cut area. For instance, if you have a six inch cut to make but you can only realistically cut in 2 inch increments, then you can "shift up" four inches for the first pass, two for the second, and then zero for the third. In this way, you can shave down to grade without over-taxing your equipment. Remember to set it back to zero for areas of the field that have smaller cuts!
  2. It can be used to offset transient GPS variations. If an operator feels like the GPS has drifted upward, then they can adjust for this using the blade shift. 

Back to top