Category Archives: Lidar/Imaging

This hologram of a church in Texas was built from a combination of airborne and terrestrial lidar scans.

Wizardly 3D

Above: This hologram of a church in Texas was built from a combination of airborne and terrestrial lidar scans. More than just illusions, hologram technology is booming. Every once in a while a new product or technology comes out that makes you do a double take and think, “Wait, what is that?” This happened to me...

Proposed 3D design software will enable users to create and work with such images as this oil sands facility drainage analysis

True 3D Design

New geospatial software combines the appeal of games with the rigor of applications. It’s never been done before: applying the rigor and disciplines of civil engineering, mining engineering, hydrology, and even classic survey field-to-finish to game-like 3D design.  Sure, CAD operators have had 3D viewing for years, which they use to review the results of...

HoloLens users are able to see both the real world around them and virtual-reality objects, such as design features that have not yet been built.

Blending Realities

A 3D design and visualization tool with phenomenal potential in the AEC world is coming from a collaboration between Microsoft and Trimble. Imagine designing an object, in 3D and color, using only gaze, gestures, and voice (GGV) commands. Imagine designing an entire building the same way—or modifying an existing one. Imagine moving in a physical...

Imetrum’s portable, long-range, camera-based monitoring system was used in the benchmarking trial.

Optical Monitoring

Above: Imetrum’s portable, long-range, camera-based monitoring system was used in the benchmarking trial. How reliable are optical monitoring techniques for civil engineering structures? Editor’s Note: Camera-based systems have long been used in industrial metrology for manufacturing, materials testing, and integrity monitoring. Now they’re finding utility in the “macro” realms of AEC (architecture, engineering, and construction). Many people in the...

This image, created with Woolpert’s online QC tool eQAS, illustrates the ability to review sign data from multiple perspectives and provides lidar and image data at the location of each sign.

Signs of Change

Above: This image, created with Woolpert’s online QC tool eQAS, illustrates the ability to review sign data from multiple perspectives and provides lidar and image data at the location of each sign.  One collect, multiple uses. A mobile mapping system (MMS) is a versatile tool capable of creating both GIS asset inventories and design-level mapping...

URC Ventures CEO David Boardman demonstrates a stockpile geometry capture. The ~3,000-cubic-yard pile was imaged in ~three minutes, using only his iPhone and two safety cones placed 25 feet apart to establish scale.

Stockpile Reports

How to do enterprise inventory management from image-based 3D reconstruction, in the cloud and in your pocket. “No one wakes up in the morning thinking that they need to buy a point cloud,” says URC Ventures CEO David Boardman. “Most people would be thinking that they need to solve some business problem.” What URC Ventures...