3D Laser Scanning Software Challenges: A SWOT Analysis

1. SWOT analysis is a strategic planning method for evaluating a new business opportunity.
2. The software is not keeping pace with hardware advances, particularly in the terrestrial scanning market.
3. A SWOT analysis of the vendors provides insight into the problem.

As part of building the opportunity proposal for a new product many software companies will perform what is called a SWOT analysis. Wikepdia defines SWOT Analysis as a strategic planning method used to evaluate the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats involved in a project or in a business venture.

Over the past few months I have heard from a number of conference attendees that the 3D laser scanning software industry is not keeping pace with the advances in hardware. I think this is particularly true for applications that are trying to feed 3D data into existing, CAD-based design engines. In the aerial segment LIDAR Analyst and LP360 are addressing the need for providing LiDAR data to ArcGIS users. In the short range market Rapidform, Polyworks, and Geomagic are providing customers with functionality that is pushing the envelope in these application areas, and in some cases into the long range.

So my question is, “Why is there not more innovation taking place in the terrestrial 3D laser scanning software market?”

I think the primary answer comes from a SWOT analysis. I believe most hardware vendors’ strength is in building scanners. In the early days they were forced into the software business. Today they have all they can do to keep up with the firmware upgrades, and the threat of their competitors leapfrogging them in terms of performance.

On the software vendor side their weakness is the lack of in-house expertise as it applies to integrating point clouds into CAD-based, design environments, and even if they did the legacy code that they are dealing with makes this a very difficult problem to solve. Of course the other issue is the proprietary nature of the data formats.

Seems like this creates opportunity, but so far the threats/risks have been too high.