It seems as though the more challenges are brought forth to me, the more of these challenges I learn to overcome! It is a very rewarding feeling to know that I have taught myself (with the guidance and advice of others) how to operate so many different types of software, programs, and devices!
Officer Taylor, Associate Director of Public Safety at Gettysburg College, saw my updates on my LinkedIn page of my project and reached out to me asking if Gettysburg College could use my photogrammetry models for emergency evacuation plans and other management. I am very excited for the opportunity to not only complete my project on terrain levels and flood patterns but to also help make my college a safer environment. I am currently working with Officer Taylor to work out the details of how the models will be used for this new and exciting extension to my current project!
Earlier this week I worked on finishing up leveling the levels of my isolated terrain level Pix4D model, making a few mistakes along the way. For example, I mistakenly loaded in surfaces that were not a part of the ground level and had to remake my model of East Quad because the changes were already saved and loaded in as part of the processing of the 3D mesh. However, fixing this error did not take too long and I learned to be more efficient and accurate in filling in voids with surfaces and loading them into the project correctly. I also entirely remade a new, improved version of Quarry Pond this week where the entire model is displayed as a single model unlike my last draft. I did this by starting from the very beginning and taking a new set of 3D grid and circular photos of the pond using the Mavic Pro drone and loading the photos as a new project file.
I also created accounts and familiarized myself with the Carvey 3D Carver, X-Carve, along with computer numerical controls (CNCs) in general to gain a better sense of what types of technology I would be utilizing. I even learned a bit about firmwares and gcode, a type of coordination code used for CNCs. Aside from that, I created trial projects using TinkerCAD, Easel, and Fusion 360 which are computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) programs that are usually used interchangeably with the Carvey 3D Carver. These programs are used for designing prototypes and objects before the file is sent to the 3D carver and printed. However, I have yet to discover how to transfer a Pix4D project to the Carvey 3D Carver machine. For this I need to export the Pix4D project file as either an .obj or .stl file and from there import it into Fusion 360 or TinkerCAD. I would then transfer the project into Easel so that it can be printed by the 3D Carver. So far I am encountering errors that do not allow me to export the projects from Fusion 360 into a .stl file, which is strange. I plan on looking more into this issue tomorrow!
One thing I am very proud of that I did this week was I figured out how to get exact geolocation coordinates from a drone photo (or any photo linked to satellite and GPS) and from a photogrammetry Pix4D project. Discovering how to do this took me an extensive amount of time, much longer than I had anticipated, but the results were nonetheless very rewarding! Essentially, I had to draw and export polylines in Pix4D around the points and load the exported .kml files into Google Earth. Do not be fooled! This process was much more complicated to figure out than one may think!
I am both excited and a bit nervous about my final weeks of the DTSF internship this summer. Because I will be attending the Hamilton College Virtual Reality conference in New York in about one week, I am doing my best to completely finish my project by the end of next week. I need to figure out how to link my Pix4D projects to the Carvey 3D Carver as soon as possible. It is merely one task but it requires an extensive amount of time to figure out how to do.
I am very proud of my work and progress so far and I am looking forward to the opportunities that lie ahead as usual!
Easel, a CAD program made by Carvey Inventables to be used for the design process of 3D carving projects.
East Quad in Fusion 360, another CAD program used to design projects.
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Pix4D Model of Quarry Pond (updated and fixed)
Pix4D Models of Isolated Terrain Elevation Levels
Stine Lake and West Quad
Quarry Pond
East Quad
