How do you turn a Lixel K2 scan into a client-ready inspection report?
The XGRIDS Lixel K2 (~£6,500, $8,999 US list) captures a walkable 3D Gaussian splat plus a survey-grade point cloud in a single pass — 1 cm relative accuracy, 3 cm absolute with its built-in RTK. Export a compressed PLY from LCC Studio, upload it to pin360 as a 3D view, and the scan becomes a working inspection document: pin findings with severity ratings directly onto the 3D scene, take real-metre measurements with two clicks, generate a professional report, and share the whole scan with a client through one read-only link — no software install on their end. Total time from finishing the walk to sending the report link is typically under 30 minutes, most of which is LCC Studio processing.
The problem: everyone shows the scan, nobody shows the deliverable
If you are researching the Lixel K2 right now, you have probably noticed the same thing an architecture studio recently posted on r/GaussianSplatting while seeking purchase approval: there are plenty of promotional videos, and very little evidence of the scanner used on a real project with a real deliverable at the end. The unboxings stop at “look at the pretty splat in the viewer.” But whether you are an architect documenting existing conditions, an engineer inspecting a structure, or a contractor recording progress, your client does not pay for a pretty splat. They pay for findings, measurements, and a record they can act on.
This post covers the part after the scan: the full workflow from K2 capture to a shareable, client-ready inspection record — with real numbers from a residential survey scan (46 files, 111 MB, ~9 million splats).
What the K2 actually gives you
The K2 is a 1.2 kg handheld SLAM scanner with a 360° LiDAR, two fisheye cameras and a forward-facing camera, and — unusually at this price — a built-in UM980 RTK module as standard. In practice that means three things for survey work:
- Metric output with no calibration.The scan's coordinate units are real metres (1 cm relative RMSE). Any measurement you take downstream is a true dimension, not a scaled guess.
- Two deliverables from one walk. A photorealistic 3D Gaussian splat for navigation and communication, and a survey-usable point cloud for accuracy-critical checks — simultaneously.
- Optional georeferencing. With RTK fix active outdoors, the scan exports with absolute WGS84 coordinates — the EPSG code travels in the LCC2 manifest. Indoors without fix, you still get a metric local frame (the manifest reads
epsg: 0).
The June 2026 LCC Studio v1.12 update matters here too: the new .lcc2 format uses SOG/SPZ compressed tiles with level-of-detail streaming, so a scan of hundreds of millions of Gaussians loads progressively instead of as one enormous file. Keep that native LCC2 scene as your XGRIDS archive; for pin360's current self-serve uploader, export the inspection model as a compressed PLY.
The workflow: scan to report in five steps
- Scan the site (10–20 minutes). Walk the building at a steady pace with the K2. A typical house takes one loop inside and one outside; overlap your start and end points so SLAM closes the loop.
- Process in LCC Studio. Import the capture; Multi-SLAM alignment, 3DGS reconstruction and colour grading run automatically. Keep the native LCC2 scene for XGRIDS/LCC Studio review, then export a compressed PLYfor pin360's self-serve 3D Scan upload.
- Upload to pin360 as a 3D Scan view. It sits alongside your PDF floor plans and site maps in the same project — same markers, same sidebar, same reporting.
- Inspect in the browser. Walk the scan in first-person or fly it drone-style. Pin inspection findings with severity ratings directly on the 3D geometry — each pin stores its true 3D position and your camera angle, so clicking it later flies anyone back to the exact viewpoint. Two-click measurements read in real metres (±3 cm on splat surfaces).
- Report and share. Findings flow into the same inspection report as your floor-plan markers — severity table, photos, locations. The client gets one link: the full walkable scan, read-only, with your branding, in any browser. No account, no plugin, no 500 MB download.
Honest limitations to plan around
- Splat measurement precision is roughly ±3 cm — the raycast lands on the fuzzy splat surface, not the underlying point cloud. Fine for “is that opening 860 mm or 900 mm”, not for fabrication tolerances.
- Reflective and glazed surfaces produce thin splat coverage, same as every LiDAR-SLAM scanner in this class.
- RTK georeferencing needs sky view. Indoor-only scans come out metric but unreferenced — plan a doorway loop outside if you need world coordinates.
The economics: why small practices can suddenly justify this
The number that changes the conversation is not the hardware price — it is the software model. XGRIDS ships LixelStudio and LCC Studio as perpetual licences bundled with the scanner, not annual subscriptions. Your cost is ~£6,500, once. Compare the incumbent options a small architectural or engineering practice actually faces:
- Terrestrial laser scanning:£25,000+ for the scanner, plus registration software on annual per-seat licences that often exceed the K2's entire price every couple of years — before you have scanned anything.
- Outsourced scan-to-BIM:hundreds to thousands of pounds per survey, a turnaround measured in weeks, and the data lives in someone else's pipeline.
- Tape measure and disto:“free”, until you cost a two-person day on site, the return visit for the dimension nobody wrote down, and the transcription errors that surface at design stage.
At one measured-survey fee saved per month, a K2 pays for itself inside a year — and every scan after that captures everything, not just the dimensions someone thought to measure on the day. The scan comes back to the office as a complete, walkable, measurable record: no “we'll check on the next visit”, no re-surveying because the brief changed. For existing-conditions work, that is the tedium the K2 actually eliminates.
Where this fits against Matterport
Matterport remains a fine real-estate tour tool, but it is camera-locked, priced per tour at scale, and its deliverable is the tour itself. The K2 + pin360 combination is survey-first: LiDAR-metric geometry you can measure and georeference, findings with severity classifications, and a report your client recognises as engineering documentation rather than marketing. If your deliverable is a condition survey, this stack replaces a scanner hire, a tour subscription, and a separate reporting tool.
3D scan views are available on the pin360 Pro plan (£79/month, 1 TB storage — roughly 9,000 house scans at the size above). Try the live 3D demo on the homepage to walk a scan before you buy anything.