360 PHOTOGRAPHY AND POINT CLOUDS: A POWERFUL COMBINATION FOR ASSET MANAGEMENT VISUALISATION

ZynQ 360 captures and creates a comprehensive digital twin of your asset, delivered within their secure visualisation software, which integrates with your existing data and systems. Providing you and your enterprise with the innovative tools to centralise and streamline both planning and operations. Reducing risk, costs, and environmental impact.

Evolving technology allows for capturing and analysing physical spaces with increased accuracy, boosting remote working capabilities.

Point cloud data is a powerful way to visualise the shape and structure of a 3D scene. A point cloud is a construct of individual points in a 3D space. Every point has an X, Y and Z coordinate, giving them their position in 3D space. Grouped together, these points form an overall model called a point cloud.

However, they often lack the colour and texture information that can make the scene more realistic and immersive. Point clouds come to life when used in conjunction with high-quality 360° photography, allowing teams to navigate their point clouds more efficiently, giving the most value to their data.

Creating Point clouds

Two common methods can be used to create a point cloud. Photogrammetry and Lidar. They both have their own characteristics, influencing when and where each technique thrives.

The continuous improvement in camera technology has allowed photogrammetry to flourish. The details in photogrammetry point clouds are forever increasing, allowing software to extract more feature points producing higher fidelity models. This method is grounded in photography, meaning a photogrammetry model will automatically have colour information, which is excellent for better understanding as-built features within a point cloud.

Lidar devices can come in multiple forms, from the traditional tripod-mounted laser scanner capable of impressive accuracy to the small hand scanners often used for reverse engineering.

A well-rounded option is Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping (SLAM) devices. These devices can produce accurate point clouds over a large area with a quick turnaround. They are also an excellent option for drone-based scanning. This gives SLAM the ideal configuration to produce detailed asset overviews.

ZynQ 360 offers a custom solution that utilises SLAM to produce accurate geospatial colourised point clouds and a 360° imagery walk-through for high-definition visual context.

Why Point clouds

Measurement extraction: As each point within a point cloud is a digital reference of the physical environment, a user can confidently select points for measurement. Common measurement types such as linear, area, angle and volume measurements can be taken easily within ZynQ’s point cloud viewer.

3D Modelling: As point clouds contain measurement data, they can be an excellent source of information for generating 3D models.

Point clouds are an excellent source of accurate information that can be referenced when producing high-quality CAD models of the as-built environment. By extension, they are also an accurate way of creating floor plans for an entire asset.

ZynQ 360 offers both Photogrammetry and SLAM scanning to bring point clouds to life. The high-fidelity scans are then uploaded into ZynQ, where several tools can be applied to the point cloud, allowing users to get the most out of their scanned assets. Their web-based platform, ZynQ, allows easy access, sharing and storage of point cloud data in an intuitive user interface, helping you make the most of your data.