Complete 3D survey of a shopping center

Project Overview

MESUR was commissioned to digitalize the inside and outside of a shopping center in Montreal, Quebec. The shopping center is approximately 17,000 square meters and proved to be one of the largest projects MESUR has scanned.

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Service

To meet our client’s needs, we implemented 3D LiDAR Scanning, a cutting-edgetechnology that captures millimeter-accurate measurements of a building or siteusing laser precision. For a large commercial center, this process produces ahighly detailed digital twin of the property, documenting every structural element,floor layout, and spatial condition in three dimensions.

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Method

For the inside of the shopping center, the Trimble X9 terrestrial LiDAR scanner was used to complete over 500 scan stations, capturing nearly every corner of the 17,000 square meter building. After the 3D scan was completed, a point cloud was created from the millions of data points the scanner collected. With 500 scans conducted, the most challenging part of the process was aligning and cleaning up all scan files. Once this step was completed, the Trimble Business Center software was used to analyze the point cloud and label points by category (ground, exterior, interior, vegetation). Following the refinement step, the files were converted into Recap Autodesk format. As Revit cannot read raw scan files directly, Recap organized the data into manageable parts, making it easier to load, navigate, and model inside Revit. The Revit files were then sent to professionals to model accurate BIM elements based on the scan.

The Trimble X9 also captured 360 panoramic photos at the same position where the laser scans are taken. These photos created a“walkthrough” virtual visit of the building, helping our client visualize and check details of their projects.

Conclusion

This project provided the MESUR team with an opportunity to work with large datasets. Improvements were made in the firm’s refinement process, specifically learning the advantages of separating larger data sets into manageable sections and the importance of fixing a point cloud’s target. MESUR has also made improvement in its on-site scanning techniques simplifying the scanning process for larger projects.

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Takeaways

Within a week, MESUR scanned a large shopping center and provided a 2mm resolution point cloud. The point cloud allowed an architecture firm to quickly and accurately build a digital model of their project. This was an occasion for the architecture firm to integrate LiDAR scanning technologies in their practice.