Our company is thinking about investing in a Scanner. We would utilize it for Route Surveys, Dirt Quantities ( Detention Pond Asbuilts) and a variety of other topographic surveys that may come up. Right now we have formed a committee to crunch the numbers of conventional survey crews and the cost of using the scanner instead. No one at our company has ever used one so processing the Data might be a problem. Any and all input in regards to this device would be greatly appreciated!!
I'm facing this dilemma as well. Not to replace crew, but to just have as well. I'm planning when it's time to learn the processing before buying. Or buying to fiddle with on the side as I self teach myself, but it's a lot of investment for that. Even getting a program and a sample point cloud to work with would be a good idea
King Cobra, post: 369467, member: 10295 wrote: Our company is thinking about investing in a Scanner. We would utilize it for Route Surveys, Dirt Quantities ( Detention Pond Asbuilts) and a variety of other topographic surveys that may come up. Right now we have formed a committee to crunch the numbers of conventional survey crews and the cost of using the scanner instead. No one at our company has ever used one so processing the Data might be a problem. Any and all input in regards to this device would be greatly appreciated!!
From my limited experience with scanning to date it is not really useful for detailed topo. I would be quicker on the robot. Rent first to get a feel for it's capabilities.
Rich., post: 370358, member: 10450 wrote: I'm facing this dilemma as well. Not to replace crew, but to just have as well. I'm planning when it's time to learn the processing before buying. Or buying to fiddle with on the side as I self teach myself, but it's a lot of investment for that. Even getting a program and a sample point cloud to work with would be a good idea
You can download Topcon Scanmaster viewer free from their website (There are others I am sure). I am sure someone here would donate a free pointcloud. You can do some basic things in Scanmaster like distance measurement and elevation measurement.
Hi. We jumped in the deep end and it took us a year to get up to speed with Mobile and Static Scanning. I would advise a year long process along the following lines:
0. Go to SPAR. You will learn quite a bit.
1. Find the aerial lidar in your area. USGS Earth Explorer, GIS, Coast NOAA (whatever that site is). Try it out on a few platforms: Civil3d has a Point Cloud module. Global Mapper is a low cost option with some great features. Try some demos of various products. I like Carlson Point Cloud for surveying with all 3 flavors of scan data.
2. Get yourself some static data and get into that. Rent a scanner if you must. Or here is a scan of a Coastal Bank I ran almost 2 years ago: http://www.ese-llc.com/scannerjammer/cranberrylane (There are a few links here.)
3. When you have some comfort, start looking at the mobile options. The MX8 looks great, but it is expensive and is permanently mounted on a vehicle.* (*Vehicle not included). The one CalTrans purchased punctured the roof of the suburban and one of the waterproof lasers had to be replaced due to leakage. We went through LiDARUSA and we have a very decent unit that is both mobile and static. Plus it is mountable on anything - car, truck, boat, backpack, wagon, low flying helicopter / airplane, etc. It's a little heavy for a drone, but they have a drone for sale.
You can always chat with me.** (**Availability limited) but e-mail is best: thadd at ese-llc dot com
"The one CalTrans purchased punctured the roof of the suburban and one of the waterproof lasers had to be replaced due to leakage."
The stock roof rack wasn't strong enough for the MX8 pod, beefed up the rack and good to go. Also the laser was leaking oil from the inside straight from the factory, nothing to do with water or condensation.
I reread the report and you are spot on. It also required other upgrades to vehicle, power system, computer, desk, dual monitors. Pretty slick looking ride. If I had the cash, I'd get a 4 faro x330 with 4 hd32es two novatel gps plus imu and a pair of ladybug 5s.
That would be sweet too.
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Thanks everyone for the input. Im gonna have my boss read all this!! Great info here!
I'm in the beginning phases of adding HDS to our service offerings. I have started out with a drone for aerial mapping using Pix4D to create the clouds from the pictures and a Leica MS60 with Cyclone for the precision work. What I like about the MS60 is the dual use, it's a robotic TS and a scanner, albeit a scanner on training wheels, 1000 points/sec with it vs. 500k-1M/sec with Leica's newer offerings. But, with the right settings I have my scan times down to manageable and when it's not scanning it's being used as a traditional TS and still making money. I went to 2 days of intensive personal training on the Cyclone software and have a much better perspective on the capabilities of not just that software but HDS as a whole. My opinion is you can use scanning to replace a component of the field work but not the whole, talk about beating your head against the wall trying to traverse a boundary with a C10/P40. In a traditional topo sense you're really just pushing the time involved from the field to the office. Instead of spending 3 days topo'ing a shopping center it's 4 hours but the 2.5 days you saved in the field get mostly used up in the office cleaning the cloud and creating your traditional deliverable. I'm sold on the tech though and I'm keeping my eyes open for a deal on a used C10. I have a dozen or so data sets I'm happy to share if anyone is interested. Just message me and I'll send you a Dropbox link. Good luck with your decision, it was a scary step for me because of the software and hardware costs involved but it definitely has a place in the toolbox IMHO.
I truly enjoy the scanning technology, and am excited to see how rapidly it is progressing. I ran one of the early Leica ScanStation units, and I blame it for my current back troubles. That beast was heavy....
However, after toting that thing around the hills of East TN for a few years I was able to get "outside" the box of the conventional measuring projects of an engineering company. While scanning is great at acquiring massive data sets very quickly, it isn't a magic machine that produces deliverables with the click of a button. The easiest way to present this technology would be to say that you are taking ~70% of the field work, and moving it to your office work schedule. Once you get fluent in the processing, of course your office time will become more efficient. When I was a one man show carrying a scanner, robot, and GPS I would plan out a project with the application of all these technologies. Once in the field, with good planning, you would start to understand where each unit performed best.
Mobile scanning has added an entirely new dynamic to the technology, and I have been researching it quite a bit lately. From my personal understanding, the MX 8 is best suited for route surveys. I believe it has the capacity to collect data at nearly highway speeds. For more flexible mounting options, and any surveying applications that aren't route surveys I believe that the MX 2 might be the more appropriate option. I am still waiting to see a demonstration of the mobile scanning, and I am most curious about the abilities of the IMU's, and GPS to keep things together. To me, the most functional office software would be the selling point. That's where the productivity would keep things under budget.
