South-West Inspection Team Embeds 360 Photos in PDF Reports

Not recommended if you suffer from vertigo, the inspection teams at Premier NDT venture into industrial sites to carry out inspections of tanks, piping and vessels. Using 360-degree photographs in the inspection reports is proving popular with their clients, and is a new way to document the conditions found at these often very remote and restricted sites.

Inspection Activity Scope, Description of Business

A great illustration of how 360 Photos in PDF technology is used is with the Inspection teams at Premier NDT Services who regularly take Panoramic 360-degree photographs during inspections at industrial sites in the South-Western U.S. These inspection reports generally include subject areas such as static equipment data, visual observations, CAD drawings, thickness data and defect lists revealed during inspections. In the last year alone, hundreds of client reports have included interactive 360-degree panoramic views presented inside the PDF report documents. The Panoramic 360-degree photos are taken with tripod-mounted or even hand-held cameras such as the Ricoh Theta S or the Nikon Key Mission 360.

Positive Client Feedback

The lead visual inspector Mike Herbolsheimer comments “I’ve used your product to insert interactive 360 photos in over a hundred PDF reports since May of 2017. The PDF3D ReportGen product works great for this type of application, achieving our goal to keep it all within the PDF so that internet access is not required. Our customer feedback is that it’s really cool and very helpful, and they want us to continue to include 360 panoramic photos in all our reports.”

How the Reports are Created

The inspection reports are created in the usual way using MS-Word, where photos, tables, and the site inspection findings are documented. Often using a PDF tool such as Adobe Acrobat, PDFs from multiple sources such as AutoCAD or EXCEL are combined into a composite PDF report. Exactly the same process is then used to merge the Panoramic 360 Photo PDF pages created by ReportGen.

ReportGen for 360 Panoramic Photos

The desktop application tool PDF3D ReportGen contains menus and services to take a 360-degree JPEG digital photograph file and convert it into an interactive spherical view on a PDF page. The photo can rotate, zoom, and has an optional automatic spin mode. Exactly as Mike points out, everything is embedded inside the PDF file so no internet connection is required.

About Premier NDT

Premier NDT Services, Inc. (Premier NDT) is a full-service non-destructive testing (NDT) company with HQ in New Mexico, specializing in inspection, testing, and engineering services for the energy industry. Premier NDT technicians are proficient at performing all of the traditional NDT methods including: Visual testing (VT), Ultrasonic (UT), Radiographic (RT), Magnetic Particle (MT), Dye Penetrant (PT), Infrared Thermography (IR) and Magnetic Flux Leakage for detecting corrosion in tank bottom. Premier NDT Services operates in a variety of industrial environments such as well sites, process areas, production facilities, manufacturing facilities, construction areas, and power plants. For more information see http://www.premierndt.com

See and try out some of Mike Herbolsheimer’s panoramic photos on the Gallery page:

https://www.pdf3d.com/architecture-bim-aec/