Scan to BIM for digital preservation and renovation of historical building in US

With this project, ORIGIN team contributed to the renovation of the historic 19-th century building in a famous historical area. Our Scan-to-BIM team completed a comprehensive model of a 4-story historical building, requiring the highest level of detail in facade modeling to ensure the design closely matches the original. This model was to be further utilized by the Historical Commission for further historic home renovation and preservation.

Input:

Point clouds that were captured by RTC scanner (for high-resolution Point Cloud) and VLX scanner (for low-resolution Point Cloud).

Project deliverables:

Complete 3D model of LOD400 exterior with ornate embellishments and simplified LOD300 interior model of the historical building, as well as its surrounding area for historic house renovation project.

The building was designed in 1895 in the neo-Georgian style and was completely erected in 1902. Its footprint features a varying number of stories, ranging from 2 to 4, which creates a unique architectural silhouette. Thanks to its diverse facade details, the building stands out as a striking element of a famous historic district.

The building’s unique architectural design and intricate details required meticulous work and specialist attention to ensure the design closely mirrored the original. It included red brick and large-scale elaborate cornices, complemented by distinctive forged metal railings with delicate, refined shapes.

The interior of the modeled historic building includes a wide variety of rooms designed for different purposes. The area includes regulation squash courts, spacious common spaces, and an oversized formal dining room on the second floor for large events. Additionally, the basement features a paneled living room for entertaining visitors, as well as a sauna, a locker room, and showers.

Besides, the interior had ornate wall paneling and stucco elements. However, the interior model was simplified according to the client’s request, in contrast to the required detailed exterior model.

The project was scanned using two different scanners to obtain two options of point cloud resolution. Let’s review them in more detail.

• Firstly, RTC scanner was used for high-resolution model of the most intricate, tiniest architectural details. This scanner was selected for the project due to its ability to deliver an exceptionally sharp picture, ensuring that every aspect of the facade, from the smallest embellishments to the overall architectural silhouette, was meticulously rendered. However, some drawbacks had to be considered, such as the higher cost and time-consuming scanning process, which required careful planning to integrate into the project timeline.
• Secondly, VLX scanner with a low-resolution output allowed the ORIGIN team to efficiently gather an overall perspective of the building’s configuration and capture a general sense of the building’s layout.

The combination of these scanners helped us optimize our processes, achieving high precision in exterior modeling and avoiding overloading the model by using low-resolution point clouds where suitable.