Most scanner specification sheets tell you what the technology can do. They rarely explain why any of it matters when you're standing on a construction site trying to solve a problem.
Most scanner specification sheets tell you what the technology can do. They rarely explain why any of it matters when you're standing on a construction site trying to solve a problem.
Terms like "640,000 points per second" and "120 metre range" sound impressive, but what do they actually mean in practice?
This article breaks down some of the key FARO Orbis specifications and explains the real-world construction challenges they're designed to solve.
The situation it solves
You've just completed the structural frame on a two-storey residential extension. Before the wall linings go in, your client asks whether the rough-in locations for the electrical and plumbing match the design intent. By the time someone gets back on site to check, the plasterboard is already up.
Capturing a site quickly isn't just about convenience - it's about timing. On an active project, the window to document what's behind the walls, above the ceiling, or under the slab is often measured in days, not weeks.
640,000 points captured every second means large amounts of site information can be captured in a single walkthrough. You're not pausing, repositioning, or waiting. You walk through at a normal pace and the scanner captures everything around you simultaneously - walls, ceilings, floors, structural elements, and service rough-ins.
The practical result: you can scan a site at the end of a working day, before a trade comes in the next morning, or during a quiet period without pulling anyone off task. The record exists. If a question comes up in three months, the answer is already there.
120 Metre Range, Indoors and Out
The situation it solves
You're managing a commercial fitout across three floors of an existing building. The base building drawings are 15 years old and haven't been updated since a previous tenant made alterations. Before your design team can finalise the layout, someone needs to verify what's actually there.
Existing building documentation is almost always incomplete. Previous works, undocumented alterations, and the gradual drift between drawings and reality are common on anything that isn't brand new.
A 120 metre range means the FARO Orbis Premium isn't confined to small rooms or short corridors. Open floor plates, warehouse interiors, double-height spaces, external facades, and site compounds can all be captured without constantly changing workflows or moving between different systems.
For teams working across varied project types - a residential renovation one week, a commercial space the next. This means one piece of equipment can handle both. You're not limited by the scale of the environment.
It also matters for external works. Scanning around the perimeter of a building, across a car park, or along an external facade doesn't require switching to a different system. The same walkthrough that covers the interior can continue outside.
3.6kg Total System Weight
The situation it solves
You're documenting a six-storey residential building at lock-up stage. That means stairs, and a lot of them. Multiple levels, tight stairwells, unfinished floors, and areas without lighting. By the time you've reached the third floor carrying a heavy system, you're already thinking about what you can skip.
Scanner weight is one of those specifications that looks irrelevant until you're actually on site. Then it becomes the thing that determines how thoroughly you do the job.
At 3.6kg including the battery and datalogger, the Orbis is designed to go wherever the site goes - up stairs, through tight access points, across uneven surfaces, and into roof spaces. It doesn't require a separate operator or a trolley. One person carries it, and one person can cover the whole building.
The indirect benefit is consistency. When scanning is easy to do, it actually gets done. When it requires significant setup and physical effort, teams start making decisions about what's worth capturing and what isn't.
Those decisions are often the ones that come back to cause problems later.
The easier a scanner is to carry, the more of the site actually gets documented.
15-Second Flash Scans at 2mm Precision
The situation it solves
You're doing a progress scan of a hospital fitout. Most of the site is straightforward — corridors, rooms, and ceiling voids. But there's a plant room with a complex arrangement of medical gas lines, fire services, and hydraulic pipework that needs to be verified before the next trade can proceed.
Mobile scanning is excellent for covering large areas quickly. But there are moments on every project where you need a different level of detail where "close enough" isn't good enough.
Flash Scans let you pause mid-walkthrough and capture a specific area at 2mm precision in approximately 15 seconds. You don't need to return to site with different equipment. You don't need to schedule a separate visit. You see the area, you stop, you scan it, and you keep moving.
This matters in situations like:
• Structural connections that need to be verified before fabrication
• Service installations that need to be checked against design drawings
• Built-in elements such as joinery, stairs, or plant equipment that will be difficult to access later
• Handover documentation where accuracy needs to be defensible, not approximate
The combination of mobile and Flash scanning in a single device means you're not choosing between speed and accuracy, you're applying each where it's needed most.
Integration with FARO Connect, SCENE and Sphere XG
The situation it solves
A subcontractor is questioning whether a section of slab was poured correctly before they installed their works. Your project manager is in the office. The structural engineer is interstate. The site supervisor is on-site but doesn't have the drawings in front of them.
Getting everyone looking at the same information, at the same time, without everyone travelling to site can be difficult.
Capturing good data is only half the challenge. The other half is getting that information to the people who need it, in a format they can actually use.
Integration with FARO Connect, SCENE and Sphere XG means the scan data doesn't stay locked on a device. It moves into a workflow where it can be accessed remotely, shared with consultants, compared against previous scans, and used to produce documentation.
In practical terms:
• A project manager in the office can review site conditions from last week's scan without visiting the site
• A structural engineer can check whether installed works match their drawings from their own desk
• Two scans captured at different stages can be compared to identify what has changed and what hasn't
• Documentation for handover or certification can be produced from the captured data without a return visit
For smaller teams without dedicated document control resources, this matters. The data captured on site becomes genuinely useful, not a file sitting on someone's hard drive that nobody knows how to access.
What This Looks Like Across a Typical Project
The specifications of the FARO Orbis aren't there to impress. They're there to solve specific problems that occur on real construction projects.
A team using Orbis throughout a build might use it like this:
• Weekly walkthroughs at key milestones - frame, rough-in, lock-up, to maintain a continuous record of site conditions
• Flash scans at critical locations - structural connections, service installations, and complex built-in elements, where higher detail is required
• Remote review of site conditions by consultants and stakeholders who can't always attend site
• As-built documentation at completion that reflects what was actually built, not simply what the drawings showed
None of this requires a dedicated surveyor or a specialist team.
It requires one person, one device, and a consistent habit of capturing the site before conditions change.
The Real Value Isn't the Specification
The value of FARO Orbis isn't that it captures 640,000 points per second or weighs 3.6kg.
The value is that those features make it practical to create a reliable record of a site before conditions change.
On construction projects, that information often becomes most valuable long after the scanner has left the site.
Questions get asked. Disputes arise. Existing conditions need to be verified. Services need to be located. Consultants need to understand what was built.
The teams with a complete digital record already have the answers.
If you'd like to see what this looks like on a project similar to yours, the team at Synergy Group can arrange a demonstration.