3D Laser scanning is perhaps the most exciting advancement in technology the surveying industry has seen in recent years. Offering an accurate and efficient means for scanning landscapes, structures, and installations, its ability to create dimensionally precise survey pictures makes for fast and accurate surveying.
3D laser scanning offers enormous potential for advancement in the survey capabilities for organizations that embrace digital technology. The CAD Room provides some insight on what 3D laser scanning is and its benefits.
What is it?
3D laser scanning offers the ability to capture the shapes created by physical objects digitally. Their use of laser lights to create data point clouds from the surface of the objects enables them to create detailed images replicating the structures it surveys. This has led to them proving to be a highly valuable tool in the fast creation of accurate survey imagery.
Offering a non-destructive, non-contact technology to detect the exact size and shape of an object, building or structure, it can create a highly accurate three-dimensional representation, compatible with the latest in digital technology.
3D laser surveys
3D laser scanning is now used regularly in civil engineering surveying projects. It offers technology capable of creating multi-hued or true colour surveys on digital cameras using signal intensity return.
It uses the created “data point clouds” to digitally map each point, which can then be manipulated within 3D rendering software to create fully working model creations when used in conjunction with other 3D technology. The user can scale and become interactive with the image, adding objects and characters to create a detailed, fully realisable 3D environment.
Surveyors gain a complete 3D digital map that offers both dimension and spatial accuracy, allowing for greater user interactivity and image quality.
What are the benefits of 3D laser scanning survey over traditional methods?
Makes complex work easier
As well as being suited for fast and accurate simple surveying needs, 3D lasers scanning is exceptionally well suited to measuring the surfaces of complex geometries and contoured shapes and buildings. This task would otherwise require vast amounts of time, expertise and data to extract the same accuracy or even lesser levels of survey information.
Reliable
It can offer reliable survey data, in terms of both dimension and spatial relation, which it does in a digital capacity, at speeds far quicker and with greater accuracy than traditional methods can. In turn, this offers both time and cost savings to create client surveys.
Ease of use and accuracy
3D laser scanning can provide access where others cannot, showing exceptional capability when used in inaccessible areas over traditional methods. This means that 3D laser scanning has now become the leading technology to perform elevation surveys, being recognised for its ease of use, accuracy and for the detailed imagery it can create.
Safety
3D scanning can improve safety by reducing the need for access platforms and removing the need for entry into areas where access may be restricted.
Removes the need for multiple visits
It also removes the need for multiple visits, through the addition of value-added datasets, its provision of real-time information can remove the need for multiple site visits. Provision of immediate access to the data allows for immediate error correction on-site, as well as reducing the likelihood of a need for re-working or fit-ups, offering both time and cost savings over that required by traditional survey methods.
Quicker
It can be much quicker; 3D laser scanning performs highly accurate scans at speeds far greater than can be achieved by manual techniques with far less labor-intensive activity for surveyors.
3D scanning Is now the most effective method used for Building Information Modelling (BIM), as it allows for information to be assembled collaboratively and updated at key stages within a project, providing valued recognition for its capabilities.
Getting help for your 3D laser scanning requirements from professionals will give you access to the latest equipment, to allow you to reap the benefits for every project requiring a survey that your business undertakes.
