Simplify your workload with the I-Site Snow & Dust filter

Weather can be unpredictable. For a surveyor, this can cause a variety of issues with collecting data, as well as working with that data later.

Although our Maptek I-Site 8810 laser scanner is temperature tolerant, and wind and dust proof, that doesn’t always help you when looking at points in the software. One of the common challenges with laser scanning is its tendency of picking up snow and dust particles, as well as exhaust.

I travel a lot for my job and because of it I have to face many challenges with weather. Being a Colorado resident, I know all too well how time consuming it can be to remove snow and dust points from a scan. Although possible, I never seem to be able to remove all the unnecessary points from the scan, which causes the resulting triangulation or TIN to have spikes.

Last winter while scanning in British Columbia a storm suddenly moved in at the end of the day. We only needed one more scan to complete the job. I knew because of the storm there would be a lot of snow points, which would reduce the resolution of the wall we were scanning. To try and compensate for it, I increased the resolution of the scan to make up for the ‘shadows’ created by the snow. What I did not consider was the difficult job that would ensue; removing the snow from the 3D point cloud while maintaining the data on the ground. I applied a number of filters and did quite a bit of manual editing, however there was still some snow left.

Maptek continually strives to make everyone’s job easier, and now we are proud to announce that a new Snow and Dust Filter is on its way. You will see this exciting addition in the next release of I-Site Studio, our 3D point cloud processing software. With a single click of the mouse particles in the air, such as snow or dust, can easily be removed.

This will allow you to quickly go from snow, to no snow…