Professional Body

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Scan-Ninja
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Re: Professional Body

Post by Scan-Ninja »

A laser scanner is just an instrument, as a total station, a tape. It all depends in what field that you are using it. Used in civil/surveying, you fall in the standards of the board. You got to follow a set of rules and regulations, does not matter if you used a total station, a laser scanner, or a tape for measurements, it is still surveying. Being in the Civil/surveying field, we always have documentations to backup our work.
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Matt Young
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Re: Professional Body

Post by Matt Young »

jedfrechette wrote:
Matt Young wrote:I think it's a bit hard on the smaller companies to label them as bad scanning companies.
I totally agree, small does not equal bad (and not just because I represent one of those companies). I would also argue that it is those small hungry companies who aren't afraid to experiment, and occasionally fail, that will ultimately drive this industry forward by challenging the status quo and doing innovative things.
Matt Young wrote:Manufacturers come across to new users with a very positive view
Matt Young, the master of understatement.
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Matt Young
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Re: Professional Body

Post by Matt Young »

Scan-Ninja wrote:A laser scanner is just an instrument, as a total station, a tape. It all depends in what field that you are using it. Used in civil/surveying, you fall in the standards of the board. You got to follow a set of rules and regulations, does not matter if you used a total station, a laser scanner, or a tape for measurements, it is still surveying. Being in the Civil/surveying field, we always have documentations to backup our work.
Agreed, but it's becoming easier for those without surveying backgrounds to use them. I reckon loads of non-surveyors use tape measures as well ;)
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Re: Professional Body

Post by NOVAMECH »

I totally agree with Matt's and Jed's - comments.

Jump in the deep end - and learn to swim - dog paddle seems like a look thing to know at this stage.

Learn to Ski? - I tell people to take the chair lift to the top of the mountain - and by the time you get down you will have the basics learnt. Just get up there.
Now you tell people that today that don't know there limits - they will ski of a cliff because Nick told me to !

Common sense needs to prevail - if you come to a super steep or tricky bit slide down on your bum. or take the skies off. Don't go crazy - then blame someone for skiing at mach 1 and falling - when you don't know how to ski.

Common sense is learnt by failing at small things while you are a child. Don't be afraid of failure, but remember sometimes it hurts like HELL. And self passivation also need to be learnt. I think you can transfer that into any area of your life.

But don't let small things or made up excuses stop you. Go for it.

So good luck -
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Re: Professional Body

Post by dan_mccurdy »

Definitely the use of scanners varies dramatically across various industries. There are plenty of things that we do with our scanner in heritage that simply wouldn't fly in a more rigorous environment (like I imagine forensics). For us it's often more important to get lots of data quickly, rather than necessarily perfect quality data (job dependent obviously). I'm not saying that we suck at scanning, just that you have to adapt to whatever conditions you are faced with - especially when people often don't want you there in the first place (my experience is that people in general hate archaeologists ... we get in the way).

So where we can often get by without any survey control at all, I imagine that would make other surveyors sob quietly into their beers while filling in their quality assurance forms.

Crikey it's hard enough to get a bunch of archaeologists to agree about anything - I'd hate to think what it'd be like trying to get surveyors and engineers to agree with us as well :-)
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Dedken
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Re: Professional Body

Post by Dedken »

I know some of these points I'm going to make have been covered but it's a pain to trawl through the thread to quote from every individual response.

I think what Richard is getting at is that there has become a prevalence in the last couple of years for people with little or no background seeing an opportunity - for there is one - and jumping in blind. There's an assumption made that it's all about pressing the start button and slinging it into a program and seeing what happens; that it's a piece of p*ss. The attitude is that any old mucker can do this work like making a round of tea or putting the bins out, forgetting that many of us have been through years of training and experience to build our reputations and get to where we are. I find these assumptions both damaging and insulting. For example; there's been a chap on here recently whose new business model is that he's seen the potential in laser scanning and is going to give it a lash (again, no harm in trying to utilise an opportunity), but this seems to be entirely predicated upon the fact that he has just finished a qualification in a vaguely related discipline and that somehow qualifies him to start up a laser scanning company. The sort of questions this person has asked have been the most basic of basic questions which pertain to not even having a vague working knowledge of what he is getting into. When pointed in the direction of useful courses the attitude has been [paraphrased] "I've just spent X years studying and I can't afford any more", "but you know, never mind this will be easy", and "I can just read a few things here and there".

Sure it's easy to press the start button and it'll be fine when everything is working well, but where these people cause damage is by not having the experience to know what to do when there is a problem. It leads to poor and unfinished work and damaged reputations, not only theirs but the discipline's. And I believe we need standards to prevent this kind of poor practise.

The difficulty is where and how to start. Surveying as a discipline has been around for so long we can almost term it in a geological reference frame: it has had the time for standards to develop, be approved and maintained by professional bodies. But laser scanning, as a surveyor's tool, as a technology does not have a geological reference frame, it was born yesterday. There is still so much research going into laser scanning and we can barely keep up with the pace of technology as it is. Therefore our professional bodies have not been able to even look at standards let alone apply them. As someone who started out as an archaeologist before progressing to land surveyor and then on to the engineering and construction industry I'm aware that required accuracies vary across the board, but that should not affect the precision with which we should try to carry out our work. But considering that there are a very large number of survey firms themselves that do not keep up professional memberships (but whilst offering lip service to their guidance notes), we might well ask what does it matter in the end?

Now, I've been a surveyor for going on 10 years but I've heard there's good money to be made in structural engineering so excuse me while I go and set myself up a little business. Never mind that I've never studied it for a minute but I've seen some pictures on the telly so I'm sure it'll be grand.....
All views are my own and are not representative of my employer, The King, God or anyone else for that matter.

"we need an instrument, to take a measurement" - I.MacKaye 1992
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