1. Could you tell us about your professional background and the way you use Pix4D software in your work?
I am a mechanical engineer with a Florida Professional Engineer license as well as a FAA Part 107 remote pilot license. Before starting my own Inspection and Engineering business, I worked in the wireless telecom industry on cell tower projects. Working in that industry showed me just how poor real world field data is being collected and used, so I started down the path of LiDAR and photogrammetry two years ago. My company has developed a process to 3D model at such a high accuracy that engineering as-builts can be used for structural analysis (we are working on a use case study with Pix4D right now). We have tried nearly every other photogrammetry software package you can find on the Internet and Pix4D is the only one that fits into this specialized workflow. LiDAR alone can’t economically capture the top of a cell tower like photogrammetry so Pix4D is an absolute key for my work.
2. What is your favorite tool in Pix4D software?
I use Pix4Dcapture some of the time but Pix4Dmapper is my main application. My workflow stops at the point cloud creation so I don’t use most of the tools beyond Step 1 and Step 2 processing. There are times that I edit the points in the rayCloud but I try to avoid that by changing settings to reprocess…at least until the rayCloud point editor is improved.
3. How did you hear about the Pix4D community?
I have used the Pix4D community for a long time, back in the old format, to research challenges I faced before contacting Support direct.
4. How is the Pix4D community helpful to you?
Hearing about other people’s successes and challenges gives me guidance and new ideas for my own work. I have also made some contacts that extend beyond the Pix4D community into broader business relationships.
5. How do you participate in the Pix4D community?
I try to login once a week to view new posts. Trying to get 1 mm accuracy on cell towers with photogrammetry has led to an enormous amount of experimenting with hardware and software over the last two years so I try to help everybody in the Pix4D community with my experience (up to the point of not giving away my trade secrets of course).