Creating As-Built Drawings (small scale projects)

[pbg]

I am curious to see how folks document existing structures prior to altering/remodeling in Archicad. Essentially documenting the building from which all future designs/etc will be generated from. Not looking for documenting large-scale projects - mostly residential buildings 5k sf and under...

Any recommendations besides a tape measure, laser, and related tools would be much appreciated - Ideally looking for some sort of software that I can use in house. If some 'touch up' has to be done after the fact that's totally fine - just looking to save some time in the overall data entry.

Thank you!

[Karl Ottenstein]

Some of the comments in this thread might be of interest:

https://community.graphisoft.com/t5/Design-forum/Survey-using-iphone-lidar/m-p/229588

[Erwin Edel]

Around here prices for having a point cloud made have dropped considerably over the years, making it viable if there are no proper existing drawings (we do consider our own billable hours of not having to spend time on site taking dimensions ourselves v.s. outsourcing it to a point cloud company). You can import point cloud files directly into Archicad, giving you a sort of 3D 'trace and reference' that you can use as a base for model. Some places are also plain 'not fun' to measure up yourself like crawl spaces below floors.

However anything significant built after 1904 generally has drawings from the permit in archive in the Netherlands, so if it isn't too large, those generally are a good enough starting point for us.

[pbg]

Thanks for the info! That Canvas program looks slick - unfortunately I am a PC/android user... Might have to look into just getting an ipad for the Lidar potential.

I wish we had drawings in a permit archive! I'm in a rural area in the USA which doesn't have a lot of accessible/recorded drawings, and limited point cloud service providers... There are a few, but for small residential projects most clients aren't will to foot that bill...

Love the links and suggestions, thank you for that. Good things to research and peruse.