To give an update. I've ordered the Riegl system. Cannot wait to get the system in house and start using it.
Almost 3 years further and all seems very quiet over here regarding to scanning. Isn't anyone interested? I scan about 75% of the time, the rtk and total station are only used for a small part of boundary to measure corners, tie points and setting out.
Very strange evolution as many non-surveyors are scanning and taking away the jobs from us.
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What's holding you back? Investment? Scared of working with pointclouds? Non interest?
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In my case I am close enough to retirement that this simply isn't something I am going to pursue.?ÿ Also, I am in a rural area focused primarily on boundary surveys only.?ÿ I do enjoy learning about scanning by following threads such as this one but only as a lurker.?ÿ If this level of capability to scan and process had been available 35 years ago I might have been intrigued enough to have followed a very different career path.?ÿ I love complexity.
In my case I am close enough to retirement
I hope you're not.?ÿ Are you ailing??ÿ I recall something about retiring 3 days before the funeral.
I'm pretty much sold on scanning for topo except tall grass and a lot of trees.
We are spending the summer surveying forest boundaries so the scanner sits in my office.
The last topo was an air attack base at an airport. I did 14 scans on control, 30 autonomous for cloud to cloud including 24 around 4 large retardant tanks.
Actually faster when there is a lot of detail in hidden areas hard to get with total station or rtk.
No, Bill. No major issues. Just being realistic. I am now roughly six months younger than my father when he died of a heart attack. We shared many things in common so I can't totally ignore that statistic. My mother made it another 11 years before a massive stroke took her one day, but even that starts to qualify as "fairly soon".
When you are twenty and you put some money in an investment at a certain rate of return you can project a huge number 50 years down the road. When that time span may be more like 10 to 15 years the return on that same investment doesn't appear to be nearly as important. It is far easier now to waste resources because the need to preserve them is much less. However, purchasing something that may take ten years to pay for itself is not so attractive.
I assisted my father in building a fence that still is very functional today. That was 56 years ago. When we were building a stretch of similar fence earlier this year I couldn't help but announce how this would be the last time I had to worry about it in that location. It was 50 years ago that I helped shingle a roof on a small church that eventually closed. I can see those shingles yet today doing a respectable job of protecting the vacant building. More and more I see things that I will not most likely have a need to worry about replacing. Young people don't think about such things.
Learning something new is wonderful. It is better than money because you can share it without losing it. So, learning about new things is great but expecting to benefit directly from them is not as likely today as it would have been even a decade or two ago. Some of us have reached that age where if someone strolls up and unfolds the equivalent of a Playboy centerfold our first thought might be, "Hmmm. Wonder what her grandma looks like."
I just received my Leica BLK360 Tuesday, and love it! Like Christmas in July!
Works great with the tablet. Guess your mileage will vary...
I’ve got one of those on the wishlist - mainly for scanning manhole interiors.
But we just got a new MS-60 for the kids, so it may have to wait until the end of the year.
I am intrigued by scanning, but trying to figure out how/where it might fit in our normal workflow. Currently undertaking an ALTA in a dense urban environment with many tightly spaced buildings has me thinking more about it. Any thoughts on scanning precision related to ALTA requirements? I would enjoy hearing about the sorts of projects you typically use your scanners for. Has it predominantly opened new doors or simply improved your existing workflows??ÿ
Any thoughts on scanning precision related to ALTA requirements? I would enjoy hearing about the sorts of projects you typically use your scanners for. Has it predominantly opened new doors or simply improved your existing workflows?
ALTA standards do not address instrumentation or methodology for locating features/monuments. Apart from the 2cm + 50 ppm specs for corner/monument accuracy, it is left to the surveyor to determine the appropriate accuracy for features being mapped. So scanning (or UAS, aerial LiDAR, terrestrial photogrammetry, steel tape, etc.) can definitely be used in the workflow.
It cuts down on field time with a solid workflow and good field personnel who understand how to maximize its efficiency. It can also prevent a return to the field if a scan captured something that was not observed with a conventional survey point. It helps out a lot for utility work where the client requires transmission line attachment points, catenaries, luminaire/guy attachments, and the like, although I prefer a scanning total station rather than scanner-only for that type of work. Opens up opportunities for monitoring too.
The value added factor is nice. We can send the engineers or architects the point cloud to drop into their CAD design, simple visualizations of the site using the colorized point cloud, or even create 3D models of features.
I scan almost all nowadays. With additional rtk or ts shots for monuments or hidden objects. I barely measure houses or street stuff the old fashioned way. Saves me a ton of time.?ÿ
Even surfaces with the excellent filtering options through grass and vegetation can be generated to civil3d. You have of course too many points but decimating is the word with scanning.
Before the Riegl purchase i did it with a Tx5 which was to cumbersome and took to long in the field, i mainly scanned buildings at that time. Now i scan all.
I took a 30k pay cut to be immersed in 3D scanning/drafting field to finish surveying so I could get the knowledge and experience to stay relevant as this technology continues to unfold.?ÿ That said, i learned to level a four post engineers transit and tension tapes, calculate cantenary etc, so I stand on the giant shoulders of my forerunners who probably would cry heresy and witchcraft upon this new fangled tech until they too got to see how incredibly valuable they are becoming in every facetof survey engineering and gulp...even architecture...( that hurt)...
