Autodesk Inventor

[#1]

Hi All

I'd love to hear from anyone using a Total station or point cloud data in IV.
I do a lot of work that interfaces with existing buildings and structures. We currently do site measurements in a very Old Skool way with paper pen tape and laser tape.
I'm looking at buying a Total station to acquire as built geometry prior to modelling the exiting conditions and also to position new works within the existing.
I had a session with a Leica Total Station yesterday which was very enlightening.
They are brilliant pieces of kit BUT predictably they have no concept of passing points back an forward between themselves and a parametric s/w app,
It would seem to be a case of shooting all the points on site and trying to get that cloud into IV with the associated ID of each point prior to modelling existing conditions.
Thats the easy bit...
Then you complete the design and want to get hundreds of points out of the IV model to the Total Station, again with their IDs, further one wants those points to exist parametrically within IV.
That seems to be the point where the wheels fall off. All the surveying gear is built for data exchange with autocad (excuse me while I wash my mouth out) so I'd have to export the geom to Acad and create and name points in there before passing to the Total station. 
Thats unacceptable as it's just too error prone and laborious as one goes through revisions and creation of setout drawings.
What I need is an IV equivalent of what these guys are doing out of Revit  http://www.gogtp.com/total-station-solution.html 

Has anyone used positioning systems with IV? Were you able to make it work for you?

[#2]

You should contact Get The Point, perhaps they can do something for you

1-800-385-7131

[#3]

Just a shot in the dark here, but did you ever consider Factory Design Suite?

http://blogs.rand.com/manufacturing/2012/03/factory-design-suite-2013-suite-enhancements.html

Watch the last video on my post there.  You can actually snap to your points in Inventor as well as do Clash Detection in the Navisworks component that comes with it.

[#4]

Thanks guys

I'll follow up GTP.

Mark, I'm yet to have a good play with the PCloud tools but I'm guessing there isint a great deal in the way of point creation and export?

Do you know of anything in Factory D Suite that adds any export functions lacking in Product D Suite Ult.

Cheers

JF

[#5]

ShaHam

Is there someone in partuclar at GTP I should be talking to? 

Cheers

JF 

[#6]

Pm sent.

[#7]

While I haven't had a lot of stick time with point clouds yet, what I have found is that once you bring in and index the point cloud and convert it to a pcg you can place work points on the point cloud points (using the Cloud Point tool).  From there they are standard work points for geometry work.

We actually partner with leica on our Scan to BIM software (using point clouds to make actual Revit objects), it just seems that for Inventor this is a little new and the demand has been there yet for 3D party programming to make it more robust.