The CAD Insider: Trimble Field Points is a combination of software and hardware that you can use to help layout anything from the model or drawing in the field. More importantly you can then use it to field check items in the field to make sure that they are in the correct location.
3 comments:
This seems like a pretty powerful tool. Although it seems targeted at the commercial and industrial construction industry, I wonder if there isn't an application for theater. For scenery load in, if you designate two points on your plaster line and then set up the Trimble correctly in the space, you could quickly lay out the rest of scenic elements, ground rigging, etc. That would be pretty darn cool to see.
I have a couple questions though. How the heck do you set the Trimble up correctly in the space. How do you tell it where it is relative to the points you want lasered?? Going further, what is the degree of accuracy that this machine has, especially as your distance to points increases. This seems like an awesome innovation, and I look forward to it's development in the marketplace.
Ben brings up some excellent points that I wish to touch upon. This tool seems incredibly powerful and useful for a multitude of applications, and the first one that comes to mind for me is the entertainment industry. The ease and accuracy with which staging could be set up in a space would be unheard of if a device like this could be used effectively. I have similar questions about how exactly this device is configured and triangulated in the space, how does it know where it is? And most importantly to me, how accurate and what types of drawing or files can be used with it, can it do something only on a two dimensional plane? Or is it able to move vertically as well as horizontally.
How useful would this be during load in? You put it down in the middle of the arena and it paints all your targets for you. You have all of your rigging points and staging corners and everything else you could need already layed out in AutoCAD for the space, and this machine does it all?
This feature sounds pretty useless. It would require you to have an accurate drawing of the space, it would require you to plan ahead, and it would require you to have this $6,500 piece of gear to do it.
The reverse of this, however, would be incredible useful. Walk into the room, and plot every rigging point or emergency exit sign, or any particular seat, and know it’s exact distance from your origin? This would be an invaluable tool for site surveys, verifying correct positions after load in, marking extreme sight line position, almost anything you can think of.’
Again, it would require you to own this expensive piece of technology. But if what you were doing required that much precision, you’d probably be willing to pay for it.
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