The definitive guide to scan-to-BIM

Scan-to-BIM is an increasingly valuable (and lucrative) service for scanning providers to offer.

That’s because BIM is more than a passing trend for your AEC customers. The scan-to-BIM process is extremely effective in creating accurate BIM models, and these BIM tools can therefore enhance project collaboration and efficiency. BIM model-checking software allows for different disciplines of models to work together which can help identify clashes, or check specific constraints within the BIM model. This is another reason why scan-to-BIM is increasing in popularity. Many government bodies have even begun to mandate BIM, so its use in AEC will only continue to increase as time goes on.

The catch is that an AEC company needs detailed 3D models of a building to create good BIM models. For new projects, this is easy enough, since 3D data is generated by designers and planners during the early stage of the project.

However, for projects that aim to update existing buildings, getting 3D data for the asset isn’t quite so simple. That’s because a great majority of the buildings in the world were constructed before CAD modeling and other digital methods became popular. If the building comes with as-built documents or floor plans, they are often limited to 2D — or wrong. The most likely outcome is that the documentation just doesn’t exist.

Reality capture data not only helps overcome these challenges but also integrates seamlessly into BIM tools to be able to create accurate BIM models. This facilitates better planning, design, and management of construction projects. The adoption of scan-to-BIM practices allows for a more streamlined workflow by minimizing unforeseen issues and enhancing the overall project workflow, achieving better financial results.

What is the value of BIM to your AEC customers?

BIM methodology lays the foundations for BIM models, and should be used in combination with with a common data environment (CDE). A CDE is a collaboration space where information from construction projects is stored and accessible to project participants. These methods allow for BIM to enhance the coordination and execution of construction documents and construction drawings.

This, in turn, helps teams to plan, design, construct, and manage a building much more effectively by keeping project stakeholders up to date, and enabling them to coordinate their work on an asset.

In short, BIM enables projects to keep work running smoothly, eliminate surprises, and improve their financial results.

BIM’s effects are complex and its benefits extend throughout the whole life of the building.

Here are three examples of how BIM can be used throughout the building lifecycle.

• Design and Planning

  Good BIM enables trades to work together in a CDE and optimize building plans before construction begins.
  For example, stakeholders can use it to perform a type of planning called BIM coordination, which orchestrates the work of MEP engineering, structural engineering, and architectural design teams during the design process. By combining the different design models into a “federated” BIM model, BIM coordination makes it easy to see clashes or scheduling problems as soon as they arise, like a run of pipe that exits through the floor rather than inside the wall.

• Construction

  A BIM model aids in the construction stage by making a wealth of information available (and easily understandable) to all stakeholders.
  A properly generated BIM model will be accurate and include the most up-to-date design data from all trades, as well as important scheduling information. As a result, some projects will use it as a reference for prefabricating building elements. This model, refined through BIM model-checking software, contains the latest design data and scheduling details, facilitating the prefabrication of components. By using BIM tools, you can build elements offsite at tight tolerances. You can then move them to the asset for installation at precisely the right moment in the building sequence to prevent clashes.

• Operations and Maintenance

  Some estimates put 70% of the building’s total costs during this phase. A good, up-to-date and precise BIM model can go a long way toward reducing these costs.
  The BIM model will include detailed, up-to-date information about a variety of building elements and systems. That means a maintenance worker or owner-operator could use it as a reference for information about the location and age of specific machines, how many parts are in an HVAC system, which kind of lightbulb a lamp uses, when repairs were last performed on a door, and a lot more.

→ BIM can help at various stages during the building lifecycle.

Now that you understand what BIM is, and why it’s important to your AEC customers, let’s dig into how you can perform your own scan-to-BIM workflow to improve BIM construction.

Depending on what kinds of resources you read (and you’re probably going to read a lot about scan-to-BIM before you get out into the field) the workflow can be broken down in a number of ways. The scan-to-BIM workflow is multifaceted, typically encompassing stages like project planning, scanning, data processing, and modeling.

After capturing the data, you’ll need to prepare it for the BIM modeling process. To do this, you’ll finalize the data in your processing software, clean up unwanted or erroneous data, register your scans together, and perform various checks to ensure that you’ve met coverage and quality requirements as agreed on in the scope of work.

If this is your first time processing data for a scan-to-BIM workflow, you’ll also want to ensure that your computing hardware can handle the huge data sets you’ll be working with.

Our processing guide can help you learn how to:

• Keep talking to your client
• Check your processing hardware
• Consider cloud processing
• Clean your data
• QA
• Register—and then QA again

Once the data is prepared and you have double- and triple-checked it to be sure that it meets requirements, you’ll turn that 3D data into a geometric BIM model.

If this is your first scan-to-BIM workflow, you’ll need to select your BIM modeling software from a range of options, determine your modeling personnel, and plan out your workflow to make the most of your employees’ time. At the end of this process, you’ll likely hand the work off to your client for their BIM work, so it’s your last chance to make sure everything is right.

Our modeling guide can help you learn how to do the following:

• Pick the right modeling tools
• Think about your modeler
• Time management is key
• Send your client a test model