The truth is, scanning is the only cost-effective solution to collect the prevailing world.

You simply can’t get into a cathedral, petroleum refinery, or metropolitan multi-use entertainment facility and measure with rulers and expect to get the accuracy you need to confidently design renovations.

Laser scanning may be the only way to do it.

Up until recently, BIM users would have a group of “asbuilt drawings” put them right into a 3D modeling program and develop a computer model to work from. Now, after several years to do that, the harsh realization has surfaced there are many discrepancies between your “record drawings” and the actual environment to be constructed.

Whether it’s sheetrock and wood, it could be adjusted to fit. But whether it’s glass, steel, concrete or mechanical equipment, a seemingly small error can grow very costly as it is a lot harder to warp and bend. (Putting expensive new equipment into a location that’s too small is really a nightmare for the installer, designer, engineer and the insurance company.)

These new 3D laser scanning technologies have dramatically changed the surveying industry – and they have changed it fast. But to really understand the evolution, let’s have a step back….

2004: 360-Degree Scans

The first 360-degree scanners came onto the scene around 2004. Before that, in the event that you wished to scan something above your mind, you had to tilt the scanner back and scan at a steep angle, as most only had a 120-degree scan ability on the vertical axis. Several companies came out with full straight scanners relating to this time that managed to get much easier.

2006: Time-of-Flight Scans

Another evolution was time-of flight scanners. In 2006, a time-of-flight scanner took about 45 minutes to one hour for a complete 360-degree scan. If you could do 8-10 scans each day, you were doing perfectly. Today, the same can be achieved in about 12-15 minutes, depending on density you will want scan.

At our firm, our first scanning projects were roads. In an exceedingly complicated area, we’d scan 1″X 1″. The time-of-fight scanners back then could collect 4,000 points per second. Now they are able to easily collect 50,000 points per second!

2008: Phased-Based Scans

Today’s phase-based scanners collect 2,000,000 points per second and will develop a �-inch x �-inch pattern far away of about 100 feet. That is incredible so when fast and dense as the average user needs. The hardware will eventually progress, faster and cheaper, but phase-based scanning is effective, stable, and provides the opportunity to scan just about anything in a reasonable about of time.

Present: 3D Modelling Evesham to BIM

Today, the big research money is going towards Scan to BIM technology, which converts billions of points in the point cloud into useful data.

Several companies have begun addressing this including small independent companies like Pointools, which developed a means for scanners to identify flat surfaces. (As small as this may seem, this is a huge advancement.) This program may also recognize pipes and model them automatically about 50% of that time period. (Another major advancement.)

Now lots of the pipe programs are receiving to exactly the same place and advancing the ball. Currently, we have been at what I call the “Model T Ford” in software packages, but every year the programs progress.

The next evolution

Having now scanned may highly complex areas in industrial sites, we have had to be able to compare them to the asbuilt drawings. In the horizontal view, they are generally close geometrically to the actual. However in their vertical axis, the pipes and duct work in the asbuilt drawings are rarely correct.

There are many known reasons for this, but frequently it is because the process is so difficult that when an installer sees an easier path, he generally takes it.

“Record drawings,” or asbuilt surveys, are rarely done after the work is complete. Typically, the conversation goes something similar to this: “Listed below are the design drawings. Redline any changes that you made.”

There is not a great deal of motivation to do a completely new survey. But in case a design team takes these documents and models them to their computer programs, they are unknowingly creating multiple problems for the contractor on the brand new job.

We recently took a couple of asbuilt documents for a complex project, modeled them and then compared them to the stage cloud to accomplish a clash detection to find out potential interferences. The results was eye opening.

Few of the pipes, ducts, waterlines or fire lines in the ceiling were in the area shown on the record drawings. If these documents had been used, the MEP contractors would have spent ten times our fee “field fitting” the brand new utilities in the old.

With the utility and cost of laser scanning, it could be best if you use one on every renovation project. If for nothing else, insurance! Just one field fit can sometimes cost far more compared to the scan itself.

If you scan the surroundings and put the proposed design in to the point cloud, you can tell in just a few minutes where in fact the major interferences will be. We have found conflicts that could have taken upwards of $100,000 to fix if they needed to be field-changed during construction. Some were fatal flaws in the mandatory design clearance that could not need been achieved and a completely new design could have had to been submitted.

Scanning to BIM is really a big and extremely important step in surveying. Right now, it’s the design software that’s trying to meet up with the scanning potential. Already this season, several new programs have come out that are much better at accepting point clouds and computer models, but they still have quite a distance to go.

Devoid of a design based on a laser scan of the specific environment is really a risk that few designers should take. I understand I wouldn’t desire to tell an owner that there surely is a construction problem which could have been avoided with a relatively inexpensive laser scan.

Laser scanning has evolved from a “luxury” to a best practice and it’s not a step that any prudent designer should skip.