Scanning the Owens-Thomas House
Today we were able to scan the basement of the Owens-Thomas House using the Faro Focus 3D Laser Scanner. We began by studying the floor plan of the specified area. Understanding the dimensions of the space is extremely important for accurately deciding where to place the laser scanner. Once we made educated-guesses, as to where we should place the scanner, we began the process! First, we agreed upon the location optical for scanning and what we hoped to capture. Next, we positioned the scanner head where we would like to begin (taking into consideration the seams which would be visible in the final rendering of the scan.) Then, we clicked the “Manage” icon on the scanner’s screen. We checked the project and its profile. We then returned to the “Home” area where we chose “Parameters.” From there, we checked the “Selected Profile,” “Resolution Quality,” the horizontal/vertical target area and that the image was being captured in color. For a majority of the scans we chose an indoor profile with a resolution quality of ¼ resolution and 3x quality. For complete scans we chose the 360-degree option, but if we only needed a specific “cut” of an area, we took a preview image then used that image to determine how narrow we had to focus our field of view by adjusting the vertical and horizontal distance. Once finalized, we reverted back to the “Home” screen where we pressed “Start Scan,” and proceeded to remove ourselves from the scanner’s line-of-sight, as to not to disrupt the image being captured.
Within the two-and-a-half hours that we were there, we were able to complete eleven scans, seven of which took the entire 5.45 minutes to finalize. Four other “Preview” scans took around a minute or so to acquire. By the time we left the Owens-Thomas basement, we had seven final scans with still captured images, as well as four preview scans. We were able to scan the Front and Back Hallway, the Kitchen, the Cistern, and the Laundry Room.
