Product Reviews

I run a 3D laser survey company which produces as built 3D models and Topographical surveys in Revit. I have just changed my entire workflow from AutoCAD to Revit so still have some level of familiarity with AutoCAD.

I was looking for ground cleaning software that could handle some of the large topographical files I collect. With a number of the products that I fond during my research it was hard to find a blend that wasn’t complicated, prone to blue screening due to memory limitations or with limits of the size of point clouds. Undet for AutoCAD seemed to have what I wanted, didn’t seem to require me to recalibrate my brain to learn something brand new, didn’t appear brutally expensive and had some pretty good guides on their YouTube channel. I used to manually remove unwanted vegetation from point clouds but for properties with overgrown gardens it was becoming disproportionately time consuming, was difficult and wasn’t cost effective for my time spent so decided to make the leap to paying for something that would help. Undet don’t do the ground cleaning software for Revit at the time of writing this review but allegedly it will soon be available. Once I have the mesh from Undet (which I use in AutoCAD Civil 3D) I then import into Revit and create a Revit Topo.

Undet for AutoCAD review from my perspective
– I needed something that removed everything except the bare ground surface incl trees, cars, plants, long grass, properties etc. I must confess Undet for AutoCAD does that very well. It does benefit from some help by me cutting out the really obvious vertical surfaces of properties before I ask it to clean and then create a mesh surface. This is due to some natural creep up in elevation as the algorithm clearly tries to average out the height changes. Marius from the Undet team got back to me immediately with some tweaks to help improve this very quickly and they work well. I really appreciated someone telling me the answer without having to trawl forums.
– The Undet Team were very good by giving me a week of trial run. I ran out of time due to a client with a time constraint and didn’t complete all the testing I needed and asked for another week which they gave me straight away. On top of the product actually working it was probably this level of them being prepared to be flexible and helpful that clinched the deal for me.
– They had a month by month option for Undet for AutoCAD costing $120 which was at the upper limit of what I was prepared to pay ( I would have rated it 5 stars and raved about it if it was $100) but it is very convenient to decide if I need it each month as doing good detailed topos with contours from sites with heavy vegetation appears to be a unique selling point at the moment. When it becomes less fashionable I can save my cash for when a job comes up.
– The software carried through all the DGPS geolocation I applied that I was worried about losing during the process, so big tick from me.
– There is a deformation analysis tool which you can tune by colour and level to give a heatmap of elevations. Very cool, quick and useful for structural engineers or ground work guys who want to check on the integrity of a surface (horizontal, vertical or otherwise)
– Keen to test how to join meshes together to make 3D meshes but if it works as well as the rest of the product then it should be fine.

Thumbs up from me, looking forward to see if they manage to translate the same product into Revit.

Piers

Jersey Laser Scanning Limited

We have used Undet for a year now and have found the improvements in our workflow to be significant. The interface is very user-friendly and highly intuitive and the software incredibly stable, allowing us to work with far larger data sets within the AutoCAD environment than was previously possible.

We are now able to import an entire scan project into CAD, no longer wasting time pre-processing it into smaller chunks nor loading and unloading them whilst drawing – everything is readily available at our fingertips. Visually, the quality of the data is crisp and the colour control options vast. The colour ramps are fully customisable to suit the user and colour can applied on a project, sub-group, or individual scan basis. This not only improves visibility of the data, but has proven hugely beneficial in the interrogation of it, allowing us to assess the accuracy of crossover data between scans quickly and easily within CAD. Similarly, the flexibility offered by the clipping tools and the fact the regions are auto saved for re-use until deleted, mean the user has maximum control over the data.

Recently we scanned a substantial hotel, converted from adjoining large Victorian properties, resulting in what can only be described as a “rabbit warren” of a building. This included a number of stairwells, some of the ones away from the public areas being very tight and winding. We were able to very easily isolate these areas, switching on only a selection of scans, viewing them in 3D and utilising colour controls to make sense of them. Any confusion or visualisation problems previously caused by crossover data have been all but eliminated. Conversely, by reducing the visual density of the point cloud, we could work on extensive floor plans or cross sections with a huge spread of data visible all at once, enabling us to generate the significant line-work very quickly.

Tori Wilkinson

With Undet we can easily create classes and scan groups e.g. scans inside and outside the railway. This allows us to turn off areas of point cloud data that are not required and concentrate only on the area of interest. The resulting display is both quicker and more detailed.

The ease of handling within Undet when creating point cloud view sections has helped us to create models in a much more timely and efficient manner but the tool that has most impressed is the SmartBoard. With SmartBoard you can easily create profiles or cross sections with the required depth; an offset step can be managed. This can be useful for creating profile sections or measuring bridge heights.

Meshing and creating surfaces are also really quick and easy with this software. The parameters can be altered to create the surface to meet your needs. The True Scan View Navigation inside AutoCAD is another advantage of this software. You can easily check how accurate your model is compared to the scan view.

To sum up, the main value of this software is its efficiency and ease of use when working with point clouds in AutoCAD. You can save time and reduce costs on projects. A great and useful tool.

Roger Thurston

We use UNDET on a daily basis. One particular example of how we use the software is when we scanned a local school with a Leica P20 scanner, totalling nearly 100 individual scans. Following the registration process, we utilising UNDET to help us to separate scans of each floor plan together with the building’s exterior in order to process the external elevations.
UNDET makes sense when viewed from a technical perspective, but the software also makes commercial sense to us as it has given us huge advantages in terms of time-saving benefits as we can now process large point counts with significant time reductions. The software is less disruptive to our work flow and has fewer software conflicts, meaning we can work faster and much more efficiently.

We can now process large point counts with significant time reductions. The software is less disruptive to our workflow and has fewer software conflicts, meaning we can work faster and much more efficiently.

Luke Stamper