Current State of the Art for Point Cloud to Revit

Deformation Analysis Software for 3D Point Cloud Data eg CloudCompare
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ashepp
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Current State of the Art for Point Cloud to Revit

Post by ashepp »

Hi Folks, I'm relatively new to 3D laser scanning and evaluating options for a client project.
The client is an interior designer working primarily in Revit for BIM. They're currently getting manually measured AutoCAD files and hand converting into Revit shells and are interested in laser scanning as the technique.

I'm currently considering the GeoSlam Zeb Revo RT as the scanning solution and understand they have the GEOSlam Draw tool to convert from pointcloud to Revit. I showed the client the video and they were concerned that there was a lot of manual work involved in tidying up the pointcloud model to get the geometry and the level of detail they need for windows, trim, hvac, etc. While I'm waiting on a demo of the product to better understand capabilities I was hoping to get some suggestions specifically around.

1) What is the best fully or semi-automated solution for point cloud to Revit conversion? I've heard Trimble Realworks has a package, Edgewise, Revit Plugins?
2) Is GeoSlam Zeb Revo RT the best option for interiors?
3) How long might it typically take to 'clean up a model'

What other considerations are there that I would want to educate myself on?

Thanks for any input and apologies if this is a novice level question.
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Re: Current State of the Art for Point Cloud to Revit

Post by VXGrid »

Hi Adam and welcome to the Forum!

To answer that question completly we need a little bit more knowledge:
  1. What is the expected accuracy from the point cloud for the walls, windows, ...?
  2. What is the project size (squaremeters)?
  3. Will they do the scanning themselfs or will they get the point cloud from a contractor?
Hardware:
The Revo is great to create point clouds for big office buildings, it's in fact one of the fastest and easiest ways to generate a point cloud for that.
Since you get feedback over the data with the Revo RT this is nice for starters, but if they are going to scan outside as well I'd recommend to have a look at the Zeb Horizon (due to scanning distance).

On the other hand one can buy a terrestrial scanner, like Faro Focus, Leica RTC, ...
The difference between the Zebs and the terrestrial scanner is: With a terrestrial scanner you receive a structured point cloud (like 360° Panoramas where you can measure inside these), which won't come with a handheld scanner. The scanning time with a terrestrial sanner is in the inside higher since you need to take one scan in each room and additinal scans to avoid blind spots. And you need to do the Registration afterwards which can get tricky when dealing with a lot of scan positions.


Talking about software:
The workflow your client is currently using should be similar to using GeoSLAM Draw. In Draw you define slices and then click at the positions you'd like to create the families, so the workflow itself is completly manual. (Each opening, wall, etc needs to be clicked by the user).

On the other hand Edgewise is doing that semiautomatically. It extracts all that information and then you need to fill the families in there yourself. I'm not sure about results when in the building is a lot of furniture and other stuff. In addition you should check if Edgewise is working with all point clouds or if you need a structured one from a terrestrial laser scanner.

And then there is a lot of other software solutions which is helpful in converting a point cloud into a Revit model.
-Leica has it's own solution which is nice to use when buying a Leica scanner (cloudworx).
-Faro has it's own solution as well (AsBuild for Revit).
-Scan to BIM (just check them in the forum here).

Or one can convert the point cloud to RCP file format (just import it into Autodesk ReCap, it's free) and import this into Revit and model directly in the point cloud.
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