How we specify

Most equipment pages are written to move the instrument with the best margin. This one explains how a recommendation actually gets made here, including the part where we tell you the cheaper instrument is the right one. It is the closest thing we have to a philosophy, and it is more useful than one.

We start from the deliverable, not the instrument

The first question is never which scanner you are considering. It is what has to be produced at the end, to what accuracy, and who has to accept it. A floor plan, a volume, a georeferenced topographic survey and a deformation study are four different problems, and the instrument that is obviously right for one is obviously wrong for another.

Working the other way round is how departments end up owning an instrument that technically exceeds the specification and cannot produce the deliverable. A handheld SLAM scanner with no RTK module is an outstanding instrument and it will never give you a georeferenced result on its own. That is not a defect. It is what it is, and the failure is in the specification rather than in the scanner.

A number without its conditions is not a number

This is the single most useful thing on this page, so it gets said plainly.

When we quote a figure, the condition comes with it, including on our own product pages. Where a manufacturer does not publish a number, we say that rather than estimating one. You are welcome to hold us to that: if you find a figure on this site without its conditions attached, tell us and we will fix it.

Why we will talk you out of a more expensive instrument

There is a commercial reason and an honest one, and both are true.

The honest reason: an instrument that was oversold does not get used. It sits in a cupboard, the person who championed it stops answering, and the department concludes that the technology did not work. That outcome is worse for us than the smaller sale would have been.

The commercial reason: we sell to institutions, and institutions buy repeatedly over years. A specification that holds up is worth more than one order. We would rather be the supplier a department calls before writing a grant budget justification than the one that won a requisition once.

In practice this means we say things like: the P1 is enough instrument if the deliverable does not need to sit on a national grid. The RS3 is the value pick if you measure a lot of obstructed points. A robotic total station pays for itself if you run a crew and does not if you are a sole operator doing occasional control. Those are real recommendations that cost us money, and they are on compare instruments in writing.

How a recommendation gets made

1. What has to be produced, and who signs it off. The deliverable and its acceptance criteria. If there is a standard or a client specification, that governs everything downstream.
2. What the site is actually like. Indoors or out, under canopy, satellite denied, on water, at height. This decides more instrument choices than accuracy does, and it is the question most suppliers never ask.
3. Who is going to operate it. A graduate student once a term and a two person crew every day are different problems. An instrument that needs careful setup is a poor fit for a teaching program regardless of how good it is.
4. What already exists. Control networks, correction subscriptions, aircraft, processing software and licenses. Half of what we get asked to quote turns out to be partly solved already.
5. Then the instrument. With the conditions attached, and with what it does not do stated as clearly as what it does.
6. Then the things nobody budgets for. The processing license, the poles, the spare batteries, the transport case. A scanner with no license produces nothing for a month, and that is a specification failure rather than a sales opportunity.

What we will not do

• Publish a comparison against an instrument we do not sell and have not tested side by side. We get asked constantly about competitor scanners. We will give you an honest opinion on the phone and we will not put a table on the internet pretending to a test we did not run.
• Write a sole source letter that is not true. One that does not survive scrutiny costs you more than running the competition would have.
• Quote a delivery date we cannot stand behind. Equipment ships direct from the manufacturer, so the honest answer on timing comes from them and you get it on the quote before you raise the requisition.
• Claim a compliance status. Whether an aircraft is on a cleared list is determined by the published list, not by a dealer. We will point you at the entry so your contracting officer can verify it independently. See government procurement.