Point Cloud Deliverables
- Service line
- Reality Capture & BIM
- Produced by
- 3D laser scanning
- Delivered as
- Registered point cloud
- Used to produce
- 2D drawings, 3D CAD, BIM
Point cloud is the term clients hear most often and get told least about. What follows is the plain version: what the data is, what makes it usable, and what comes out of it.
What a point cloud is
A very large set of measured points, each one a position in three dimensions on a surface the scanner could see. Enough of them together and the building appears, because the points sit exactly where the surfaces are.
It is measurement, not a picture. Any dimension in the building can be taken from it afterwards without going back to site, which is the practical reason the data is worth having.
What registered means
A scanner sees only what is in front of it, so a building takes many scan positions. Registration is the step that joins those separate scans into one coordinated dataset on a single coordinate frame.
An unregistered set of scans is a pile of separate measurements. A registered point cloud is one survey of one building, and it is the difference between data you can draw from and data you cannot.
Format
The point cloud is delivered in the exchange format the project requires. That is a project question rather than a preference: it depends on what the receiving team works in and what has to be done with the data next.
Tell us which software the data has to open in, and it is issued accordingly.
What gets made from it
The point cloud is the measured record. Most clients also want something drawn or modelled from it, and that extraction is where the survey turns into a document somebody can work in.
- 2D plans, elevations and sections
- 3D CAD model
- BIM model at an agreed level of detail
- As-built survey report