Project Estimating
Field time, battery count, storage needs, and processing time for every project type. Use the numbers here to build proposals, schedule field days, and confirm your hardware is sized for the job before you leave the office.
The Numbers You Need Before Every Job
L2 Pro
- Battery runtime: 90 minutes per battery (1,900 mAh clip-on). Approximately 72 minutes in cold conditions below 41°F (5°C).
- Internal storage: 1 TB SSD. Approximately 12 to 16 hours of raw scan data at 60 to 80 GB per hour.
- Project scale: Campus-scale environments. Tens of thousands of square meters per battery.
- RTK setup time: Approximately 5 to 10 minutes per session including module attach, satellite acquisition, and post-Fix walk-in.
- Initialization per segment: 30 to 45 seconds for static dwell at start.
K2
- Battery runtime: Approximately 1.5 hours per battery (1,900 mAh clip-on, K1-compatible). Approximately 72 minutes in cold conditions.
- Internal storage: 512 GB eMMC. Approximately 6 to 8 hours of raw scan data. Not field-swappable.
- Project scale: Single-building to small-campus indoor and outdoor coverage. Several thousand to tens of thousands of square meters per battery.
- RTK setup time: Approximately 3 to 5 minutes per session. RTK is built-in (no external module to attach); time is for satellite acquisition and post-Fix walk-in only.
- Initialization per segment: 30 to 45 seconds for static dwell at start.
PortalCam
- Battery runtime: Approximately 60 minutes per battery. Swap before reaching 20%.
- Internal storage: 512 GB eMMC. Sufficient for most single-day projects.
- Project scale: Small to medium indoor environments. Optimized for visual fidelity rather than area coverage.
- Initialization per segment: 15-second static initialization plus 15-second static dwell before walking.
- Segment hard limit for Map Fusion: 20 minutes per segment.
K1 (Legacy)
- Battery runtime: 90 minutes per battery. K1 batteries are K2-compatible.
- Storage: 256 GB TF card (swappable). Approximately 3 to 4 hours of raw scan data per card.
- Project scale: Single low-rise buildings. Several thousand square meters per battery.
- RTK setup time: 5 to 10 minutes including external module attach.
LixelStudio Processing
- Recommended hardware: NVIDIA RTX 3070 or better, 64 GB RAM minimum.
- Processing time ratio: Approximately 20 minutes of processing per 1 minute of scan data at Medium Quality on recommended hardware.
- RAM consumption: Approximately 2 GB per minute of scan data. 15 minutes max on 32 GB, 30 minutes on 64 GB, 60 minutes on 128 GB.
- Output disk requirement: Workspace grows to 2 to 3 times raw data size during processing.
LCC Studio Processing
- Recommended hardware: NVIDIA RTX 4090, 64 to 128 GB RAM, NVIDIA GPU required (no AMD support).
- Processing time: Highly variable by scan complexity and Maximum Gaussian Splats setting. Plan overnight runs on scans over 20 minutes.
- Reconstruction modes affect time: Map Fusion takes substantially longer than Single Model. Aerial-Ground Fusion: 48 hours or more.
Multi-Scan and Fusion
- Map Fusion limits (LixelStudio v4.0): Up to 10 segments, 200 minutes combined, 20 minutes per segment maximum. Same device model throughout. Supports L2 Pro, K2 with firmware v2.4.1+, and K1.
- Map Fusion limits (LCC Studio v1.13): Supports L2 Pro and K1 only. K2 excluded from LCC Map Fusion (K2 in LCC Studio is Single Model and Spatial Recognition only with 90-minute single-scene cap).
- Overlap requirement: 50 to 100 ft (15 to 30 m) shared geometry between adjacent segments.
- Aerial-Ground Fusion: 48 hours or more processing time. 100 to 10,000 aerial images. 16-core CPU, 96 to 128 GB RAM, RTX 4090 recommended.
Estimating Scan Time in the Field
XGRIDS devices do not capture a fixed area per unit of time the way terrestrial scanners do. Coverage depends on walking speed, space complexity, and how much re-coverage is required. The numbers below are working estimates based on published speed guidance and real-world project experience. Use them for proposal budgets, not scan time guarantees.
Walking Speed and What It Means for Coverage
The maximum recommended walking speed is 3 ft/s (about 1 m/s). Most indoor environments require 1.5 ft/s (0.5 m/s) or slower through transitions, doorways, and corridors. In practice, an indoor floor with mixed open and corridor space averages somewhere between these extremes when factoring in time spent pausing at key areas, handling transitions, and returning to loop closure points.
Congested and active environments increase scan time significantly. Occupied offices, construction sites with active trades, and facilities where you cannot control pedestrian traffic require repeated passes, longer dwell periods at transitions, and more frequent rescans of areas where moving objects interrupted SLAM tracking. Budget 1.5 to 2x the standard estimate for any site you cannot clear before scanning.
Scan Time Estimation by Project Type
The estimates below reflect total scan time in the field, including initialization, route coverage, transitions, and loop closures. They do not include setup, teardown, data transfer, or drive time. Multiply by 1.25 to 1.5 for a realistic on-site time budget that leaves room for rescans of problem areas.
The 20-minute segment rule is a hard limit, not a suggestion. Each scan segment submitted to Map Fusion must be 20 minutes or under. Plan your route and battery swaps around this constraint. A 25-minute scan cannot be trimmed after the fact into two fuseable segments. Design the route so each segment ends in an area that overlaps the next by 50 to 100 ft (15 to 30 m).
Battery Count and Storage Planning
Batteries Needed
Budget one spare battery per 90 minutes of planned field time for L2 Pro, K2, and K1 (60 minutes for PortalCam). Cold weather reduces runtime approximately 20%. Add one extra battery as a safety buffer for projects longer than 3 hours or in temperatures below 41°F (5°C).
Raw Data Storage Needed
Budget 60 to 80 GB per hour of scanning for L2 Pro, K2, and K1. PortalCam data volume varies but the 512 GB internal storage is sufficient for most single-day projects. For L2 Pro multi-day projects, plan offload drives with at least 1 TB free space per full scan day.
Processing workspace is temporary but must exist during processing. LixelStudio and LCC Studio both write large intermediate files during SLAM optimization and reconstruction. The workspace grows to 2 to 3 times the raw data size during processing and shrinks once the final output is written. Plan storage to accommodate the peak, not just the final deliverable.
Estimating Processing Time
Processing time is determined by scan duration, software, hardware, and quality settings. The ratios below are based on the recommended hardware configuration (RTX 3070 or better, 64 GB RAM minimum). Older GPUs or lower RAM will produce longer processing times and, in some cases, processing failures on longer scans.
The 20:1 processing ratio is for Medium Quality on recommended hardware. High Quality settings increase processing time substantially and are not published with a consistent ratio in the official documentation. Standard Quality reduces processing time but produces lower Gaussian point density. For production work, test one segment at your target quality setting before committing to a full-project run overnight.
Total Time from Site Visit to Delivered Output
Use the phase breakdown below to build realistic client delivery timelines. The most common mistake is quoting delivery time based only on scan duration and ignoring processing, QC, and export time.
- Pre-Field Prep. Software verified, batteries charged, storage cleared, coordinate strategy confirmed, GCPs placed if required. Plan 1 to 3 hours depending on project complexity.
- Field Collection. On-site scanning including setup, initialization, scanning, data QC in LixelGO or LCC Scan, and data transfer off device. See scan time estimates above.
- Processing. LixelStudio or LCC Studio reconstruction. Plan for overnight runs on anything over 20 minutes of scan data. Aerial-Ground Fusion: 48 hours or more.
- QC and Export. Review output in LixelStudio or LCC Studio. Check accuracy reports, identify problem areas, clean if needed, export to client format. Plan 1 to 4 hours.
Worked Example: 1,200 sq m (12,900 sq ft) Office Floor
Project: single-floor office space with point cloud and 3DGS deliverables. Scanner: L2 Pro 32/120 or K2. Client deliverable: RCP for Revit and LCC for client visualization.
Run LixelStudio and LCC Studio processing in parallel when possible. Both are processing the same raw scan files but independently. If the processing workstation has sufficient RAM and VRAM, starting both pipelines simultaneously cuts total calendar time nearly in half. Monitor RAM usage closely: running both simultaneously on a 64 GB machine will likely cause one or both to fail on anything over a 15-minute scan.
For project-specific scoping questions, contact XGRIDS Technical Support or your authorized reseller.
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