Earlier this month Tobias Ebbinge from
Picard Innovations reached out to me to introduce his company and software called
Yuzu. You may have seen Steve Stafford’s post on this at
Revit OpEd. Like Steve, I saw a similar technology at AU last year called
PKNail. They are similar tools according to Tobias but Yuzu is available for Revit
and Autocad as well, and there's a price difference on top of that.Yuzu facilitates Architectural surveys with the help of a
Leica Disto (sold separately) and a Windows laptop with Revit.
Here’s the video walk-through:
http://vimeo.com/42406629
There are some great benefits to this method of surveying. First, as you survey, the model is built with only a little help from you. The
Leica Disto device communicates via Bluetooth so there’s no messing with cables.
Yuzu and Revit create the walls and etc. using the wireless measurements as you survey.
Second, from experience I can tell you that people (of which I include myself) make mistakes, especially on surveys. Sometimes this means going back to the project site to verify, and sometimes more than once. Since you are building the Revit model as you measure, you’ll leave with a finished and laser-accurate survey model.
There are some good tutorial videos to get in-depth understanding of how it works here:
http://www.picardinnovations.com/support/product/yuzu_for_revit/
Yuzu is currently $750 and will work with the less-expensive
Leica D3 BT checking out at $379. Making it a bit over a grand investment but now consider this: The number of hours saved by reducing your survey trips, reducing the number of people required to survey(1), eliminating the time it takes to translate your chicken-scratch into a model back at the farm, and leaving the project site with a complete and accurate survey model… It likely pays for itself after the first project. If you use
Yuzu or
PKNail, I would be interested in hearing your opinion on it. And if you have a spare
Leica Disto, send it my way!
Cheers
