FIELD 360 / Overview all firmware from ver 1.0 to 4.0
Used software:
Preview:
All supported scanners
Display
Register
Measurements
GeoTags
Quick Plan
Cleaning tools
Export
Leica FIELD 360 it's a mobile-device app, which the main purpose was to control the scanner, pre-register scans, and adding some additional information as geotags to your project. But in the past four years, it gets a lot of improvements. So I decide to tell you about all the main features that were added. As you could imagine there were many updates and some of them bring just stability improvements, so if we'll begin to review all of them, it could take too much time, so I decided to split them into 4 categories:
Stability improvements and bug fixing
New devices support
Visibility enhancement
New Features
So let's skip all bug fixing and stability improvements and move to the next section with supported devices. At the start the FIELD 360 supported only RTC 360, later there was added also BLK360 G1 and ScanStation Pxx support, now it's also possible to operate the new generation of BLK360. The application could run on tablets and phones with iOS and Android operating systems. It's also possible to run the application on the BLK3D measurement solution because it has the Android operating system. All scanners got almost the same functionality in the FIELD 360 but depending on the scanner model the functionality could be slightly changed. For example, BLK360 G1 has an infrared camera so you could able to see it in the FIELD360 Infrared panoramic image, BLK360 new generation and RTC 360 have VIS system, so you could see the movement of the scanner in the environment live.
The next big section of improvements it's visibility enhancement. Engineers did great work by implementing new features, they got a nice balance between functionality and simplicity, which was one of the reasons why the FIELD 360 got awards for the best user experience from the International Forum Design.
There were added:
Show scanner live position - helps you to determine where you are now and where you should place the new setup
Appearance on the map view only the last 3, 5, or 7 setups. It's very convenient when you scanning different levels or stairs for example
Show neighboring setups at a configurable distance in 360 View for smooth navigation - when you have a lot of stations it's highly useful
Optional silhouette view to hide ceilings and floors for better visibility. Works in the 3D and the Map views
Different modes of the color point cloud in 3D and panoramic views
Split screen mode, allows you to work on different applications at the same time.
A lot of improvements were done to the registration functionality:
A very nice feature is to combine the last scanner position with the previous one automatically by clicking the Quick-Link button. Generally, you are doing one setup after another in subsequence so this small tool highly speeds up the entire process, you don't need to open the cloud to cloud window, adjust scans, make optimize, all that you need to do it's just click the one button.
Also, you could enable the Pre-Align scans to faster the whole process of registering the data
The new default behavior in Linking is to initially select the older setup as a reference, independent of the selection order.
One small useful feature is to add a template name for setups, that you could use when working on a big project in different jobs.
Measurements improvements got these features:
Support multiple units of measurements.
Display horizontal distance and height difference for measurements. Very useful mode when you need to determine elevation between two points
Added area measurements. You could draw any shape to measure its area.
Possibility to make measurements in the 3D View. In this mode, you could make more precise measurements because you see on which exactly point you are snapping on
The next big area of improvement is geotags. Tagging it's a great feature that is used in different kinds of applications, you could attach detailed images, video, audio, document, or web link to a specified point in the cloud and this information will be shared with everyone who is involved in the project. Geotags are even used for automatic classification in Pointfuse software. It's the perfect tool for asset management, and there were a few updates that are very important:
Support of the BLK3D, allows you to take a stereo image with this device and then make additional measurements right on your photo. It could be used with your laser scanner or stand-alone for smaller jobs to capture important and intricate details.
Black and white target support is one of my favorite features. I use it every time, it gives you the ability to set location, which will be used later for target extraction by REGISTER 360. You could add the name of your target and choose an approximate place of its location on the panoramic image. After importing your project to REGISTER 360 all targets will be placed and named automatically. And if you have a huge number of targets, you could upload txt file with their names and coordinates, it gives you two abilities: 1st you'll be able to select the target from the name's list, and don't spend time typing it by yourself, 2nd you could skip the step with importing this targets to REGISTER 360 as control points, they will appear there automatically
The next improvement in geotags section is the recognition of QR codes. You should choose the Text type of tag and you'll see a small icon of the QR code. Click on it and put your camera on the QR code, text from it will be extracted automatically and placed in the Notes field.
One of the latest updates is the support of the Apple Lidar sensor. It helps to reduce the number of scan setups by capturing hidden details in narrow areas where it might be difficult to setup a laser scanner. Also, you could make scans just with your phone or tablet, register them directly in the FIELD 360 and use them as a standard point cloud from the scanner in your daily applications.
Quick Plan is an optional, purchased add-on that can be accessed within the Leica Cyclone FIELD 360 mobile device app to enhance existing in-field 3D reality capture workflows. It allows users to create rooms by swiping along walls within the captured data to provide immediate results from the field. Users can define doors and windows, export a 3D model, and share it with project collaborators in the office - all from their tablet or smartphone.
You could run and test the Quick Field functionality even without a license, for that you need:
Select Bundle or Setup
Click the Room Plan icon at the top right corner of the screen and you'll see the red arrow in the middle of your screen
Drag it from the left to right side and the application will be switched to the Quick Plan mode.
In that mode, you'll be able to create walls with specified thickness and height, they will be fitted to the point cloud. After creating the walls you could go to 360 views and add doors, windows, or technical holes. After the model will be finished, you could export it in IFC or DXF formats.
One of the latest features that were added to the FIELD 360 is cleaning point clouds with a rectangular fence. At the moment It works in the 3D mode for one setup view. To activate it go to 3D view, select the cleaning icon and you'll see the rectangular fence on the screen, adjust your camera position in front of unwanted points, then click on the fence corner point to adjust its size or click to the center of fence to enable rotation mode. When your fence will be defined click the Done button and choose what you want to delete: Points Inside Fence or Outside Fence. This feature is highly useful in an office environment with a lot of glass walls. But there is one more way how to use this tool, for example, you need to scan the site with medium or low resolution and some objects should be scanned with a high density but you don't want to store the full scan, because it has a bigger size. in that case, you could make one scan with typical settings and one more with the highest. Then just select the needed area on the high-density scan and delete all outside, that will give you the detailed scan of the required area.
And the last section of improvements supports additional export formats. At the moment it includes:
TruView Cloud
E57
PTX
HxDR
And with the Quick Plan plugin, you'll be able to export also DXF and IFC formats.
Additional formats expand your workflow capabilities, you could export data in the field directly from your phone to the office or share it with the customer via cloud platforms and skip steps with downloading, importing, and registering the data on your desktop computer. So let's see how to export data to E57 from the tablet and then brings it directly to the Cyclone 3DR:
Go to Bundles or Setups list of your project in the FIELD360
Click the 3 dots icon and choose the Export to E57 button
After the export will be done you could send it immediately to the cloud storage or just save it in the file folder on your tablet
Connect the tablet to the computer and open iTunes, click on the icon of your phone and select the File Sharing menu
Choose your folder with E57 data and click the Save button
After downloading will be completed just bring the data directly to the Cyclone 3DR and you'll see the cleaned, registered point cloud with panoramic images.
Full list of improvements you could find on the downloading page from iStore or Google Application markets
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS :
Android tablet computer or phone running on Android 10.0 or higher on 64-bit ARM architecture with the 64-bit operating system and at least 4GB of RAM.
Recommended devices: Samsung Galaxy Tab S6, Tab S7, Tab S8, Samsung Galaxy S20, S21, and S22 series. Apple iPad tablet computer or Apple iPhone running on iOS12 or higher with the 64-bit operating system and at least 4GB of RAM.
Recommended devices: iPad Pro 11 (2019, 2020, 2021) and iPhone 11, 12, 13 series.
For first-generation BLK360 scanners, iOS devices are recommended.