JohnBunnFARO wrote: ↑Thu Feb 14, 2019 4:19 amAlso, Just last month, ASCC conducted another massive independent study where all major manufacturers sent out their own engineers to compete for accuracy, flatness, levelness, etc. The scanners in the study included FARO S150, Lieca P40, Lieca RTC360, FARO X330, FARO S350, and Trimble TX-8. Guess which won? Here is the link to that study
https://www.bkf.com/ascc-3-d-laser-scanning-study/
Interesting reading, thanks for sharing. Reading it I'd note that
"the participants included personnel from four contractors, two consultants, and representatives from two laser equipment manufacturers" which included testing 4 Faro scanners, 3 Leica scanners and 1 Trimble. No Z+F, Reigl, Topcon so it is hardly fair to say all major manufacturers were represented nor were they equally represented, given that among the 8 scanners there were 2 S150s and 2 P40s. With respect to picking a winner, I'd say it is clearly the people that carried out the study in terms of illustrating the efficacy of laser scanning for this task, which was clearly their goal. Given that there were two S150s and two P40s it is interesting to see that the range of errors when using the same instrument was as high as the range when comparing different instruments, similarly the range of errors when observing on different days using the same instrument and operator. The study also notes
"each participant worked independently. All were instructed to use what they considered to be best practices for the work" which as any surveyor will tell you indicates that error is as much down to application of best practice as the colour of the survey instrument. As such, while this is a great study regarding the efficacy of the technology, it doesn't say much to me about the different instruments as there are far too many confounding variables and a very small sample size in terms of numbers of instruments.
What it does illustrate really nicely is that if you're going to get a new scanner, rather than reading too much into the specs, get kit from the different manufacturers on a site that corresponds to your needs, get them all to measure the same site, and compare the results.