The latest advances in real world data capture were demonstrated recently at SPAR Europe, held in Amsterdam in December 2014. For this to happen the price for the scanners still needs to drop to pro-sumer levels. Until real-world captured data becomes ubiquitous, 3D manipulation skills will still remain a specialised area. The act of effortlessly capturing reality for manipulation in a computer just seems so wonderfully Sci-fi, no wonder everyone wants to do it. Like BIM, owners and management are asking for work to be done in a certain way because they have heard it is the latest thing, often with no comprehension of the benefits or what they can do with it once they get what they have asked for.Īs the reality capture world develops, I feel this situation is only going to get worse as the technology involved in scanning just gets ‘cooler’ every year, now featuring UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) aka drones, robots and hand scanners. Simply asking for a laser scan survey will add to the cost to get the same result and the 30GB point cloud model delivered will be handed to a design team who will have no idea what to do with the data format. The old and proven ways will be quicker and more economic. Many surveys will not need to be done by laser scan.
#Autodesk memento set scale and unit software
This process is, in itself, a skill set requiring training, experience and additional software tools. These ‘dumb’ points act as a guide for those who model BIM components to replicate the ghostly as-built point clouds in BIM components, such as walls doors and windows. The ‘Scan to BIM’ process only caters for the physical 3D representation and will only ever generate dumb XYZ points or meshed surfaces. Myths are easily started but oh so difficult to squash.īuilding Information Models are much richer than their predecessor’s 2D symbolic representations, the density of knowledge captured and layered with BIM provides even more benefits from the fact that building elements are modelled in 3D. In many respects the hype that follows BIM around also leads owners to perceive that in some way less work is done in the process of design and by using a BIM they can magically expect savings of anything up to 30% on design development. I am sorry to disappoint but this just is not the case. The phrase that so easily slips off the tongue, leads people to think that there is a quick, autonomous and instant way to bring the real world inside a BIM application and have an intelligent model ready to go. Autodesk’s Recap and Autodesk Memento (pictured) are enabling new possibilities from every day imaging devicesĮvery time I write about Scan to BIM, I start off by stating that there is no such thing.