topic Re: 3D Laser Scanning in Collaboration with other software

3D Laser Scanning

Aaron Bourgoin — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 16:30:46 GMT

I saw a presentation yesterday made by a civil engineering / survey firm who showcased work done with a Leica 3D Scanning station. They offered examples of both terrain modeling and structure scanning (interior and exterior)

Has anyone had first hand project experience with this technology?

The presenters claimed to be compatible with Revit and ArchiCAD via R12DXF. The proof would be in the pudding and unfortunately due to client privacy issues they were unable to leave any sample files for evaluation.

I'm a bit skeptical. It just seems that the "point cloud" their instrument creates is not much more than a 3D underlay for a bunch of drafting that they would do with a fee for service.

Any thoughts?

Re: 3D Laser Scanning

Anonymous — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 17:02:28 GMT

Hi Aaron,

Laura Handlers Bimx blog talks often about laser scanning and Revit -

http://bimx.blogspot.com/search/label/Laser%20Scanning

Personally, I know nothing of the process other than it looks interesting!

Re: 3D Laser Scanning

MMontgomery — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 21:30:05 GMT

Hello,

Bump.

My company would like to get a 3D scanning system, but not sure which one to get.

I've got Trimble's 'Realworks' installed and a sample point cloud (1.2GB file!) in which I'm converting to geometry.

The folks at Trimble haven't had any experience going from their point cloud to ArchiCAD. I have had no luck exporting from Realworks into ArchiCAD. Of the file formats Realworks exports to, DXF, DGN, DWG and OBJ are the only ones compatible with AC, and none of them produced a model in ArchiCAD.

Has anyone successfuly converted a point cloud or point cloud based geometry to an importable file that ArchiCAD can use?

Re: 3D Laser Scanning

Bricklyne Clarence — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 23:04:07 GMT

MMontgomery wrote:
Hello,

Bump.

My company would like to get a 3D scanning system, but not sure which one to get.

I've got Trimble's 'Realworks' installed and a sample point cloud (1.2GB file!) in which I'm converting to geometry.

The folks at Trimble haven't had any experience going from their point cloud to ArchiCAD. I have had no luck exporting from Realworks into ArchiCAD. Of the file formats Realworks exports to, DXF, DGN, DWG and OBJ are the only ones compatible with AC, and none of them produced a model in ArchiCAD.

Has anyone successfuly converted a point cloud or point cloud based geometry to an importable file that ArchiCAD can use?

You would probably need an intermediary application or software that plays nice with Point-cloud applications and point-cloud information to get your point-cloud info into ArchiCAD.

The obvious candidate is McNeel's Rhino3D which can not only import point clouds but also has it's own internal inbuilt digitizing or scanning module to scan the model directly into Rhino. Rhino would then convert the scanned information into a coherent (and hopefully water-tight) 3D mesh or model exportable into other software such as ArchiCAD.

On it's own, a point cloud is merely a collection of points in 3D space with nothing more than 3D coordinates for each point. At least that's how a program like ArchiCAD would read them. Hence the need to convert it into a 3D mesh or a solid which can then be read correctly in other programs.

Re: 3D Laser Scanning

Mats_Knutsson — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 07:19:55 GMT

I got scanned lines of a rock side (I don't know if they came from a point cloud or if the scanner did lines directly) that I covered with a surface in Rhino and saved as .3ds and then into ArchiCAD as usual. It worked great in 3D and 2D-sections. This was 2003 or 2004.

/M

Re: 3D Laser Scanning

Anonymous — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 12:22:43 GMT

Firs hand experience here comes:
Point cloud is useless in Archicad and any other software actually. Typically surveyor is converting point clouds into the actual model using specialized software. This ain't cheap though (although way cheaper than 3-5 years ago).
This models can be exported to dwg. Granted Archicad still lacks a proper support of 3D dwg files (importing as object is a joke), you would need to convert it to IFC first.
You can use point cloud in Navisworks where you can somehow get the idea of how the scanned structure looks like.

Re: 3D Laser Scanning

Anonymous — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 05:49:21 GMT

I saw one of these laser scanners in action about a month ago.
www.faroasia.com

it was so good I just about cried 😉 I know what I want for Christmas!

Re: 3D Laser Scanning

vfrontiers — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 07:11:11 GMT

I am shooting from the hip here and have not experience (but a lot of interest)... But if a POINT CLOUD generates an XYZ file, how well will AC14 interpret that directly?

Re: 3D Laser Scanning

Anonymous — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 19:19:14 GMT

vfrontiers wrote:
I am shooting from the hip here and have not experience (but a lot of interest)... But if a POINT CLOUD generates an XYZ file, how well will AC14 interpret that directly?

Assuming you mean the XYZ to mesh function I imagine it would work quite badly if at all. The point clouds tend to be very dense and I suspect the quantity of data would overwhelm the tool and even if it didn't I doubt the result would be of much use.

Re: 3D Laser Scanning

Dwight — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 21:52:58 GMT

Point clouds must be manually analyzed to separate differing materials and connect edges logically. A nightmare.

Re: 3D Laser Scanning

vfrontiers — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 22:10:24 GMT

We recently were asked to map out (topographically) a boulder hillside... Not something I want to do with a stick and transit!... That Leica solution was recommended although we did not end up doing it.... Cheating, eyeballing and faking it turned out easier. (Go figure)...

Re: 3D Laser Scanning

Laszlo Nagy — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 23:47:55 GMT

As far as I know point clouds may contain as much as many-many million points.
I wonder how ArchiCAD would deal with that. My guess is: not well. It is just too much data.

Re: 3D Laser Scanning

Dwight — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 02:52:21 GMT

vfrontiers wrote:
Cheating, eyeballing and faking it turned out easier.

Like marriage. Whodathunkit?

Re: 3D Laser Scanning

vfrontiers — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 04:00:00 GMT

OUCH!

Re: 3D Laser Scanning

Anonymous — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 13:29:57 GMT

Hello there !
I add my stone to the edifice ...
I'm a French user of archicad, last week a person from Faro came to present their fantastic 3d Focus scanner...It was cool.... but...
Since this presentation we try to use cloud points file made with the scanner....try a soft called 3Dreshaper (demo available) which cost the half price of Polyworks (20000euro ) but for now it's quite impossible to easily and quickly extract a 3d model from it.... the faro scan price is around 21000euro.(the 120 meters model, without extra battery the tripod and the additional spheres of placement)....
the guys of polyworks accept to test the file we have done with the scanner last week (3 scans of a street )...
I don't know if their solution is quick and profitable ... the future will say it
i ll give my feedback soon !

(sorry for my English because I didn't practice for a while .... )

Re: 3D Laser Scanning

MMontgomery — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 15:31:38 GMT

I was able to get a point cloud of a manufacturing plant interior from Trimble to work with and tried importing it into ArchiCAD in several ways.

I used a demo of Trimble's Realworks software to convert the point cloud into various formats and used it to create a 3D model to export.

When importing the point cloud as an XYZ file into ArchiCAD, it took several hours and never fully completed, even after leaving it to run overnight. I could see it add many, many hotspots, which were placed in a Doppler radar fashion. It would eventually just stay in spinning cursor mode. I could cancel that and flip into the 3D window and nothing was there. Pretty much what I expected.

The DWG and DGN formats didn't produce anything either, and most disappointing, the 3D model I created in Realworks didn't have an export format that ArchiCAD could import. This may change in the future.

Considering I only tried the one example from one manufacturer, it's possible that Leica, Faro, and others may have an exportable 3d format that ArchiCAD likes. However, my experience was that until a point cloud is able to be imported raw directly into ArchiCAD and converted to walls/slabs/parts within AC, the point cloud and it's related software package would primarily be useful as a reference for pulling dimensions, since you would ultimately be doubling your modeling effort creating a surface model in the point cloud software and then again in ArchiCAD to convert everything to parametric parts.

It definitely has some very nice advantages such as quick and accurate field measuring as well as the ability to refer to the scan for a dimension that was missed, eliminating a trip to the site. But for the price, it still appears to be a bit out of sight for what it offers.

If anyone else has had any success importing from a laser scanning system, I'd be interested in hearing about it.

Thanks!

Mike