Anybody use Carlson Point Cloud?
They made some outstanding leaps in 2015. They implemented the 3dtk engine and have phased out the old PointTools engine. They have implemented some variables for intensities and I just got a beta yesterday allowing for variations of height banding. I know some other software products that have these functions already, but I know of no others that allow for the use of my field to finish codes.
The banding is over 1' intervals - ie between the red and blue is the contour.
Have you used FaroScene and, if so, how does it compare?
We have Scene. (and Global Mapper, Quick Terrain Modeler, TopoDOT, Civil3d, Arc10, ScanLook and bunch of freebies.)
Every salesman says the same thing: They are all just tools in the toolbox. There is no one solution.
I was advised at training that Scene is decent at registration and most users export to another program as soon as the cloud is registered. I have tinkered with Scene but I really have not gotten far beyond the registration. I have exported some orthophotos with mixed results.
We use the Faro for about half our scans. We could import the others, but Scene is a little clunky. As I recall, Scene controls CAD as you extract from the cloud. I tried it once, but I gave up. Carlson will register clouds but I have not tried that. I have Scene and ScanLook for that.
I really like that I can use my field codes in Carlson - All of my linework comes in the way I want it to. I have not had great luck with the meshing and exports to TINs (too many points = too many triangles) but after I complete the linework, I can pepper the spaces with ground shots with a greater density than the typical ground survey. With the banding, I can now see the breaks easier and I can pepper those areas with smarter ground shots.
When I first got Carlson, I made do. I was saddened that some of the functionality was lacking - I could not change the intensity range or the height range. There were some good points (like importing up to 1 Billion Points) and I got through several projects, but it needed more. Carlson hired a bright young programmer who has made some fantastic changes this year.
spledeus, post: 353243, member: 3579 wrote: ... Carlson will register clouds but I have not tried that ...
Too bad. That's what I would like to learn about. If it would do that as well or better than Scene, one would no longer need Scene!
It might need a little nudge. I brought in 2 FLS files, but I did not get much further before I went off and did some real work.
I looked at the spheres and did not figure out how to specify the target. I will have to resort to reading the manual.
