Gabriel Delisle stands beside a Leica Total Station. A laptop PC fitted to its tripod displays a 3D CAD model. Delisle clicks a point at the top of a column on screen and the surveying device instantly rotates. The red tag of its laser nails the top of a column 80 ft away.
"Its bi-directional," Delisle remarks, meaning that users can navigate in a CAD image to locate features on a structure, or use the laser to tag points and apply those coordinates to build a CAD model or drawing in the field. Delisle is a software developer at fieldDesigner, Inc., the Montreal-based creator of the CAD/total station linkage.
