Fast ways to create 2d floor plans and elevations

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Aaron_Hazen
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Fast ways to create 2d floor plans and elevations

Post by Aaron_Hazen »

Hello helpful, intelligent ;) people

I need help. I have been tasked with discovering the quickest way to go from a point cloud to a 2d floor plan, with the final deliverable being in AutoCAD.

Any third party software solutions are welcome. AutoCAD 2015 is being used. If there is a workflow video etc. on youtube that I neglected to find on my own, feel free to point me to it.

I think there is a serious possibility that scanning and drawing in CAD when done with the correct workflow can be comparable, if not faster than traditional survey methods in speed.

If you agree post your ideas below :D

Thanks, appreciate any assistance.
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Re: Fast ways to create 2d floor plans and elevations

Post by imcid953 »

I'm not sure if this is what you're looking for.... We just did a project where we had to scan trees. The technician used kubit in AutoCAD to trim away what he needed to see and then (from a top view) drew lines with the osnap off. All the line work went to zero elevation. He did this with the banks of the river, the sidewalk, flower beds, drip line of the tree, etc. He then added in text to display the heights.

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Re: Fast ways to create 2d floor plans and elevations

Post by JeffT »

Import the cloud or a slice of the cloud, trace walls etc using node snap, use the FLATTEN command.
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Re: Fast ways to create 2d floor plans and elevations

Post by Majid_noori »

Hi,
If you have Cyclone you can use Silhouette render mode then export it as raster (Snapshot). Insert the raster into CAD software to trace vectors.

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Re: Fast ways to create 2d floor plans and elevations

Post by Jana-at-kubit »

Hi Aaron,

You might want to have a look at kubit's PointSense Building.
You will find information and a short video here:
http://us.kubit-software.com/CAD/Produc ... ilding.php

Hope this helps.
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Re: Fast ways to create 2d floor plans and elevations

Post by Matt Young »

It's an interesting question and although some automation could be used to create wall positions it is mainly a manual process. Snapping to the point cloud is okay but it all depends on the scale that you will use to plot your final drawings. When creating floor plans, elevations and sections you will need to make sure that everything is consistent in every instance. When walls deviate and you draw them exactly as they are in the point cloud it is difficult to retain this consistency... for example, if I am drawing a floor plan and the final drawing scale is to be at 1:100 then it is pointless to show a 20 to 30mm deviation on a wall, it just won't bee seen at that scale. It is better in my experience to average the wall positions and make wall at ninety degrees to each other. in some cases walls are at other angles and obviously they can then be drawn differently, but for the most part averaging and simplifying the drawing process is far more efficient. Then you have to add information such as cill and window heights, floor levels, text, door symbols. We have a drawing process that has been developed over 30+ years and I can tell you that automatic extraction could only account for a small percentage of the work flow, if any at all.
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Re: Fast ways to create 2d floor plans and elevations

Post by stefanskrobanski »

Hi Aaron,

We have a tool in Pointfuse to produce Plans/Elevations from Vector Models produced automatically from Point Clouds. The results can be exported as DXF files. You can try it out for free with the Pointfuse Pro trial.

http://www.pointfuse.com

Regards,

Stefan
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Re: Fast ways to create 2d floor plans and elevations

Post by arie »

Another quick 'n dirty (but free) way would be to use Cloudcompares cross section tool. After defining the elevation for the crosssection you can derive a polyline and export as dxf. As has been mentioned by Matt, depending on your desired output, manual work probably will still be necessary.
You can generate multiple cross sections at defined intervalls at once, which then can be cleaned up in AutoCAD later on.
http://www.cloudcompare.org/doc/qCC/Clo ... ool_V2.pdf
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Re: Fast ways to create 2d floor plans and elevations

Post by max72 »

You can check pointcab too, not yet mentioned.
If has some nice batch raster extraction features (you prepare multiple section, views and so on, and then you can process them all at one, maybe during the night).
It used to have a very nice weekly rent too, now the minimum is 1 month.

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Re: Fast ways to create 2d floor plans and elevations

Post by Aaron_Hazen »

This is helpful. I'll look into a few of these softwares.

I'll try to get back on here eventually to discuss what I found...

Thanks!
Aaron Hazen
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