Scanning Best Practices for the Swift

Overview

Try these tips and tricks to make sure your Swift scans are quick and easy.

Mobile Scanning

• Before scanning, walk the scan area and deal with potential obstructions, including objects that may block your path, etc.
• Start mobile scanning in an area with planar walls, preferably with a regular flat ceiling and floor. Avoid areas with glass walls or big windows.
• Continuous visibility of planes is very important for the mapping) algorithm and will provide optimal results.
• If possible, finalize the mobile scans at the original starting position.
• During mobile scanning stay always behind the trolley (at the handle) and do not move around the system.
• Open doors completely before scanning, and do not move them during the scanning process. 
• When walking through a door from a room to another, stop in door frame to perform an Anchor scan.
• Do not scan on steep ramps or sloping surfaces. This can corrupt the Scanplan trajectory – observe the Scanplan’s 2D map on the smart phone.
• Walk at moderate speed during mobile scanning. Please observe and follow possible notifications by the speed indicator. Reduce speed in case an orange or red bar is displayed on the smart phone.
• Visual mobile scan quality depends on walking speed.
• Preferably keep a distance of 2m-5m from walls in large halls or areas. Alternating walls with i.e. pillars are advantageous – avoid uniform, tunnel-like corridors.
• Occasional visible reference spheres (with identical diameter) improve the trajectory calculation in SCENE. 
• Handle the system smoothly, especially when turning.
• NEVER lift the system grabbing the tripod! Dismount the tripod from the trolley for any kind of lifting (stairs etc)!
• Avoid mobile scans longer than 10 minutes.
• Use a high-end computer (min. 64GB RAM) for processing in SCENE.
• Keep raw scans for possible later (re)processing.

Stationary Scanning

• Static/stationary scans will be performed at the resolution and quality settings set by the user in the LS GUI. These settings should preferably be done prior to mobile scanning but can be performed on the fly via the phone too.
• As for any other stationary scanning, the user can enable the use of the color capture with the internal camera.
• Stationary scans will help to achieve better results in term of quality, resolution and visual impression (mobile scanning being restricted to R=1/4, Q=1).