Scan to BIM & As-built drawings for church in Florida

The main request of the client was to obtain a set of drawings, including:

• Floor plans for the basement, main level, and second floor;
• Reflected ceiling plans for the basement, main level, and second floor;
• Exterior elevations for the north, south, east, and west;
• Window and Door schedules;
• Interior section cuts, 3 in total;
• Interior elevations, 34 in total.

Taking into account the quantity of the drawings and the need for perfect coordination among them, it was decided to complete a full model of the Church. All the drawings were generated semi-automatically based on this model.

Scope of work: Create a highly detailed model of a 3-storey historical building featuring ornate exteriors, intricate interiors with complex railings, comprehensive MEP, and an extensive set of drawings (floor plans, RCPs, facades, interior elevations, window and door schedules).

Input: Comprehensive Point Cloud of both interior and exterior. Photos of the interiors taken before the start of the reconstruction.

Output: 3D Model of interiors at LOD 350; A wide-ranging set of drawings.

First Church of Christ, Scientist, located at 809 South Flagler Drive in West Palm Beach, Florida, is a historic structure that, on December 3, 1998, was determined to be eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places. However, the owner objected to the property being listed on the Register. It is still a functioning Christian Science church.

The exterior of the church is adorned with various embellishments and classical elements such as:

• Ionic columns
• Coffered ceilings combined
• Acroterions
• Entablature
• Cornices with repetitive 3D patterns
• Pediments
• Decorated window grills, etc.

The main principle we adhered to during modeling was avoiding model-in-place elements. All the applied decorative elements are loadable families. For example, cornices with repetitive 3D patterns were made with a generic model line-based category.

Despite having only graphical information on the overall drawings, it was requested to have door and window schedules that showed opening sizes, the number of instances used in the building, and descriptions of their types. With these requirements in mind, all door and window elements were modeled considering the future operations that would be done with them:

• Exterior grills were modeled as separate elements so as not to interfere with window legends;
• Blocks, where doors have windows above, were modeled as separate elements with different categories to enable automatic placement in different schedules.