Was totally skeptical about drone surveys until I tried them

My crew was doing manual site measurements for a 12 acre commercial lot in Phoenix last month. Took us two full days with a total station and we still missed some elevation changes near the drainage ditch. My buddy at another company kept pushing me to try drone photogrammetry. Finally rented a DJI Matrice for a day and processed the data with Pix4D. Got the whole site mapped in 4 hours plus a point cloud that showed every dip and rise. Has anyone else made the switch away from traditional surveying yet?

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spencerw722mo ago

That data quality angle is actually bigger than most people realize. A point cloud from a drone shows you stuff a total station literally cannot see unless you specifically go measure it, like subtle drainage patterns or small washouts. The elevation changes you missed by the ditch are exactly the kind of thing that can wreck a grading plan if nobody catches it. Your buddy probably saved his company a ton in change orders by making this switch earlier than you did.

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nora_barnes2mo ago

That 50k points per second from the LIDAR is impressive but I honestly think people overstate how much it actually helps on typical grading jobs. I've seen crews get buried in point cloud data trying to find drainage patterns that aren't really there because the drone flew at 200 feet instead of 100. The ditch your buddy missed? A good rodman with a total station and a grid shot every 25 feet would have caught that same washout in half the time. It's not always about more data, sometimes it's about knowing where to look and having the experience to say "hey that spot looks wrong" instead of waiting for a software to tell you.

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