Terrestrial laser scanners, commonly known as LIDAR scanners, are used by Plowman Craven 3D to rapidly and accurately capture the geometry of film sets, locations, buildings, the scene of a crime, tracts of urban landscape or swathes of rural terrain. In fact, we are expert in recording any space or structure, in any part of the world, during the day or in the middle of the night.

Traditionally data would have been collected using single point measurement techniques such as total station theodolites, but the advent of laser scanning systems has greatly increased the speed and completeness of the data collection at a scene. The scanners collect between 2000 and 400000 surveyed points every second, accurate to around +/- 5mm as the laser sweeps across the visible surfaces. The result is a 3D point cloud, where each point has an individual x, y and z value, representing the actual surface within the scene in 3D. In some of our systems the true colour of the target point is supplied via an additional passive channel. This colour information allows an instantaneous automatic texturing of the three dimensional model. As the scene is scanned the generated 3D points are displayed within the propriety software on a laptop screen. This allows data to be easily spot checked on site to eliminate any errors and to identify areas where more detail is required. By collecting from a number of different locations we eliminate any gaps or shadows in the point cloud data. This is necessary because the scanners are line-of-sight instruments; in other words they cannot survey what they cannot see.

We register the individual scans to produce one complete 3D point cloud. This digital data is then processed by us in various specialised software systems and can be used in a variety of ways; from producing 3D computer models of an entire scene and all the objects within it to generating traditional 2D/3D computer-aided design (CAD) drawings such as elevations and plans. The raw data point cloud can be used in free viewers as a powerful visualisation resource and the line work drawings or models can be supplied in a number of formats. Furthermore, animations of the modelled data can be produced by us that will play on most laptop and desk top PCs.

Plowman Craven 3D have been working with LIDAR scanners longer than any other European geomatics company. We have the experience and enthusiasm to provide a LIDAR service par excellence.

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