Laser scanning for BIM

Obtaining useful data from reality capture devices, such as Terrestrial Laser Scanners (TLS), for the extraction of semantic information and its subsequent use to support Building Information Modelling (BIM) use cases (e.g. Scan-to-BIM or Scan-vs-BIM -based use cases) is a complex task that requires planning and execution expertise. Point clouds of quality need to be produced following a conscientious planning and execution of scanning. And once the point clouds are acquired, methodical pre-processing operations are vital to ensure the point clouds finally are of high quality. This paper summarises some guidelines to surveyors for a successful data acquisition campaign, especially when these data will be employed for automatic processes involving point clouds and BIM, such as Scan-to-BIM or Scan-vs-BIM. The guidelines are also useful to the recipients of the point clouds involved in those processes, such as BIM modellers or Quality Control (QC) managers.