The story behind the reference surveying software

Carlos Villalva had been working as a surveying professional since the late 1960s. To meet the demand for projects involving repetitive calculation routines, he spent time programming with calculators such as Texas Instruments, HP, etc., and later with micro-computers in BASIC like Casio, Sharp, Sinclair, Commodore and others.

In parallel, Francisco Navarrete had worked since the age of 18 at an engineering firm, where he developed programs for the structural calculation of buildings and bridges. During his studies at the Faculty of Computer Science he deepened his specialisation in technical applications programming in C++ with advanced graphic representation, and later in the CAD environment.

This shared affinity (computing applications in the technical field) gave rise to a symbiotic collaboration and friendship that made it possible to migrate the algorithms and sources of the programs written by Carlos Villalva. Francisco Navarrete developed a first surveying and stake-out application in MS-DOS, with export to DXF files of point clouds, horizontal and vertical alignments, and longitudinal and cross-section profiles.

To accompany this product, initially created for his colleague's professional practice — and which they saw as a qualitative and quantitative breakthrough — they developed an application for surveying and stake-out on the PSION Organiser II, with only 16 KB, connected to total stations from Topcon, Leica, Trimble, Zeiss and Sokkia. They also began working in AutoCAD, creating utilities in AutoLISP, which were the embryo of what is now MDT.

Demonstrations of these products at events such as TOPCART in 1986, together with distribution by surveying equipment manufacturers, made possible the creation of the company TCP-I.T. in 1994, which later evolved into APLITOP, founded in 2004.