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Technology moves on I guess. I note more and more people are using laser surveying to carryout English heritage level 3`s and standing building surveys.
What are peoples thoughts on this. Is it an effective method or is it not as vaulable as an archaeologist with a pencil.
Obviously the laser image would then be interpreted by an archaeologist and be far more detailed and have a greater ease of manipulation.
I vote for laser having seen the amazing results they give.
Its natural progression... charcoal, pencil, propelling pencil, single shot laser, multi-shot laser..... next 3d holographic image by your desk.
Close enough for a country job!
What do you mean lost on price again!
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laser looks pretty... laser goes beep.... laser accurate to mm ... but tell me... can laser show you that odd texture in the mortar, or the sudden change in colour of that brick, after all the bricks you looked at.? Nope...
I vote for Laser.... THEN pencil... as only by standing next to the building.. face to face... will you really understand it.!
rant over!
"No job worth doing was ever done on time or under budget.."
Khufu
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I think mr Hosty has a point (as does a pencil...)
I have no experience of this technique, but does it just produce a very detailed but 'sterile' image that then needs interpretation from scratch? This must have a cost implication, if you then need to send someone to site with the plot and a pencil to draw all over it.
Apologies for my ignorance, but in these parts the technological fault line does not run between pencil and laser, but between pencil and propelling pencil.
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It produces a image that can be manipulated 360 deg. You can produce sections, elevations, close ups and sutble variations in texture and consistancy by using an ultra violet beam associated with the laser. It fire 60`000 beams a second takes a fraction of the time of 4 men with a thermos, hat and pipe.
Close enough for a country job!
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It sets fire to 60,000 beams a second - don't use it on timber-framed buildings then, fer Gawd's sake
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Funny enough, I spent part of this morning viewing a computer programme that can be used, amongst its many other uses, to 'wrap' rectified photographic images over archaeological survey plans, in any dimension, size or scale.
Said programme loads up data straight from the TST, without having to transform raw data into shape files first and with PenMap type tablet facility allows surveyor/illustrator (perhaps there is room for a new job title there) to largely prep finished drawing in the field. It seemed to me there were an infinite variety of textures, colours, stipplings in the programme, so more than adequately covering those minor details that illustrators have used pens and pencils for over the years. The ability to wrap a photograph over the survey data means of course that in effect 'total reality' can be achieved. Which might answer some of the suggested disadvantages of firing 60,000+ loaded questions at a listed building.
(Although I dont see how it can possibly reproduce that degree of 'cut'you can manage with a sharpened 6H pencil into thick permatrace, the one that makes ink from a Rotring pen run around an outlined image on the page, unless of couse it were linked to some kind of laser powered Etch-a-Sketch machine).
It certainly seemed to provide an advantage (at least in efficiency of producing the illustrated end-result) over the ArchView/ArchGIS programmes we use in the field at present. But perhaps not as efficient and good as if you could use full works AutoCAD in a field situation (that may only be a matter of time coming though.)
Bluetooth facility in TST allows surveyor to be standing in field whilst laptop is immediately sending survey data via mobile phone link to elsewhere (illustrator in office, English Heritage inspector in [u]cozy</u> office, county archaeological advisor/conservation officer at home in bed, consultant lazing on Bermudan beach etc etc)
Some disadvantages, such as finding TST with built in Bluetooth, finding appropriate connection lead for TST without Bluetooth, the flimsiness of supplied penmap tablet (could possibly last as long as 5 minutes on a real archaeological site), making sure that there is mobile phone coverage in the area you are working, but I guess these are minor points really.
My first thought was (strangely anticipating Trowelfodders question even from a distance of a thousand miles or more) how useful the programme could be for standing building recording, as well as, what we will probably use it for, producing topographic models from archaeological site survey data. My second thought was, how few standing building recorder and illustrator jobs there might be if this technology became widely used.
To answer Gog's point regarding interpreting the image and does someone have to go out with a pen and sketch and make notes all over over a survey plot. I think the answer is that in time the surveyor/illustrator/recorder post becomes multi skilled, but even at the worst (with traditonal roles maintained) the technology allows for technical questions over quality of interpretion to be answered immediately (i.e illustrator/interpreter at one end of a link asks surveyor/recorder to straight away check any detail that is not clear or obvious). In a field situation excavators with palm pilots rather than drawing boards could be sending record/plan data to supervisor in the site hut as soon as or even whilst, it is compiled (I know, I know.... how will you ever get them out of the site hut thereafter?)
Those archaeological units that still have dedicated 'site planners' may find themselves at the crest of a new wave. Those of us who have long predicted the 'paperless archaeological archive' hide smug grins this evening...[8D]
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Total station, camera, distomat, paper and pencil every time.
Is our conclusion for the moment.
Having flicked through the standards document 2006 I see no mention of laser surveying so therefore that means the drawn, photographic and descriptive records still have to be done.
Laser is a means of data capture and still has to be interpreted and a drawing produced.
Peter
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whatever means you use the interpretation is the important element. Lasers cannot do this for you. There is no way to adequately record a building except to stand in there and get on with it. Non laser methods force you to stand in the building and examine it nothing can really adequately this basic part of the survey.
Now for buildings at risk and management of some structures, lasers could be incredibly useful. A laser can get an architect a set of 'as existing' plans where people cannot safely go if the machine is insured enough to be placed in the building. The last laser machine I saw was very good, but the movement of the laser at the head was quite restricted so it would have to be put up in several places to get good coverage. Once a laser has at least 270 degrees vertical movement and can spin 360 degrees then they will become very useful and we will have to seriously consider them.
Now landscape survey where the more restricted movement of the laser is not an issue would, to my eyes, seem to be the most useful function of these machines.
