The survey conducted at Snailbeach Mine gets the wow factor.
When looking at various new technologies on offer at the moment it is vital that you get to test them in a real world scenario to know that they will work for you, before you commit to purchasing.
This was the reason Advantage Geomatics conducted this survey and in the process we were able to offer a deliverable to a charitable trust, Shropshire Mines Trust.
With the assistance of Matt Ingram (Phoenix SSE) we surveyed the site over the period of two days, utilising a variety of Topcon hardware, namely a GPT-9005 (an older but robust robotic total station), a Hiper SR GNSS system (an active network GNSS receiver) and a GLS-2000 ( a modern 3D scanner).
With the data captured we then used Topcon's Magnet Collage software to register the various clouds. We had no formal training on this software and having used other processing packages in the past were aprehensive about how far we would get on our own but this was all part of the test and we were assured that Collage had been developed with simplicity at the forefront. With minimal assistance at the export stage from Andy Givens (Topcon UK) we were able to register all of the scans which were almost an even split between control based and cloud to cloud scans, create a unified point cloud and export an E57 format file of about 8GB.
Armed with the E57 we approched Andrew Thompson (Applications in Cadd) who was able to generate the fly through video on the new n4ce software that is being put through testing as this is written. You can view the video using the link click here. The results speak for themselves, the video allows clients the opportunity to visualise the survey rather than interpret the drawings as has been the case in the past. The ability to render surfaces, import 3D objects such as planned developments or overlay photogrametry data from UAV gathered data shows how powerful a tool this could be.
We were very pleased with the results of our test and impressed with the data flow offered by the Topcon solution. As a result it has made our mind up on the direction of investment. As an added bonus we have been able to offer the deliverable to the Shropshire Mines Trust and hope that they are as pleased as we are with the results.
