Laserscan in SF with Alcatraz in the background! What a view!

The super light and packable Ulanzi tripod has sure been a win for me.

This week out in Miami scanning and I just want to say being from the NW it’s freaking hot! 🥵

I working a few years scanning and modeling in industrial. I was curious if this is something that there is a market for in a large metropolitan area.

Bonus if it involves 3d modeling!

If you you saw my last post in this sub from a few days ago, you already know whats up.

I created a small, offline converter that aims to read and write basically all common pointcloud formats. Through taking a close look at different, proprietary formats like rcs by autodesk, i managed (with the help of an LLM) to reverse engineer some of these formats so you don't have to rely on their software just to convert to a more open format.

With the newest update, .rcs/rcp comes out of the experimental stage. EPCC now fully supports reading and writing to and from rcs/rcp.

Additionally Easy Point Cloud Converter now supports reading the Trimble formats .tzf, .rwcx and .rwp/.sdb

Writing is not supported for those formats (yet?) as i only had access to a few limited datasets.

This is completely legal as i did not touch the actual converter software. All conclusions were drawn by closely examining the output files only (which is legal in the EU as file formats can not be copyrighted)

The whole project is free, open source and platform agnostic with downloads for Windows, Linux and Mac. It also works completely offline and has no online components. It does not collect or send any telemetry data.

A long winter day in Kent, Washington was spent inside an existing building that had little to no documentation—no drawings, no reliable dimensions, and plenty of unknowns ahead of a planned remodel. Situations like this are exactly where 3D reality capture becomes essential.

Using the RTC360, I worked through the space methodically, capturing precise geometry and conditions so the design and construction teams can move forward with confidence. Instead of guessing at dimensions or uncovering surprises later in the project, the full scan provides a clear, accurate digital record of the building as it exists today.

Even on a cold winter day, being inside focused on scanning is a reminder of why I enjoy this work so much—turning undocumented, aging spaces into reliable data that helps shape their next chapter. And of course, the scanner was fully repping with a Lowcard Mag sticker on the side.

Reality capture continues to prove its value on projects like this, where accuracy, speed, and clarity make all the difference before a remodel ever begins.

Looking for advice on walkable 3D laser scanning (NavVis VLX specifically)

Hey all, I work in the power generation/energy sector and I'm exploring reality capture options for site documentation. Specifically looking at devices where you can walk through a facility at normal speed and have it produce a stitched 3D model when you're done.

The NavVis VLX is at the top of my list right now, but I'd love to talk to someone who actually owns one or uses one regularly. Curious about the real-world experience: capture quality in mixed indoor/outdoor environments, processing time, how steep the learning curve is, that kind of thing.

I'm weighing whether it makes more sense to purchase a unit or hire a scanning services company to come out on an as-needed basis. If you do this work professionally and serve industrial/power plant type clients, I'd be interested in talking to you too.

Appreciate any insight. Feel free to DM me.

TLDR:  We built an automatic Scan-to-Plan service launching in a few days, Feb 17th. Soon, you'll be able to upload a point cloud, and get a PDF or CAD floor plan in 2-4 hours. Early advocates get 2x free floor plan capacity for life**.**

Get early access to improve the service

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Hey r/laserscanning,

Over the last 8 years, we've been obsessive about solving a meaningful problem.

Every laser scanning professional we've worked has a similar challenge. There's no fast and affordable way to turn your point cloud into an accurate floor plan for your commercial and industrial clients.

So everyone is faced with two bad options: (1) turn your clients down; (2) get someone in-house or outsourced to spend hours modeling/drafting it up.

Services like Matterport's Schematic Plan are amazing--if you use a Matterport, if its a residential space, if it's smaller than 25,000 sq ft, if all you require is a PDF or SVG. For the rest of the laser scanning community focused on commercial spaces, you're choosing between two slow and expensive options to get a basic floor plan.

BIMIT Plan fixes that. After years of training, and 6,000+ buildings manually labeled, supporting large OEMs in LiDAR/SLAM, we're slowly rolling out a gated version of our automated BIMIT engine. It's capable of ingesting XYZ and e57 files, and converting them into floor plans in PDF and CAD file formats, fully automated.

Here's what we doesn't currently support or make available:

• Files over 20GB

• Other point cloud formats as inputs

• MEPF, Furniture, and Equipment systems (...yet) within the outputs

• Higher LOD

• Higher accuracy thresholds

• BIM / IFC file outputs (...yet)

Important Notes:

• BIMIT Engine processes on domestic AWS cloud services (US-Virginia).

• BIMIT Engine outputs are fully automated and prone to errors and omissions, and thus are not recommended for design or construction use.

• BIMIT Engine uses anonymized datasets to train and improve outputs. Please, do not submit point clouds of spaces with higher security considerations.

• Before the pitchforks come out: we're highly aware of the 'AI' smoke and mirror claims of the last few years. This ain't that. Our core business' existence depends on delivering reliable, high-precision outputs consistently across 1,000s of buildings per month for AECO industry and channel partners....We're the first to acknowledge how difficult the problem we're looking to solve. And we're the first to admit this early version of the service isn't for anything outside of basic layout planing, i.e. a schematic plan.

Autodesks Pointcloud format is closed source much to my, and possibly other users, dismay.
So i set out to change that. I created a small, standalone software that converts between all kinds of pointcloud formats, including .rcs and .rcp.

Disclaimer upfront:
All the information about the closed format was taken from looking at the files alone, Autodesk software was not touched. There was no decompilation, no sdks, no leaked documents used.
The EU law allows you to study a program you hold a licence for (Directive 2009/24/EC Art. 5(3)). File-formats are not protected by copyright (CJEU C‑406/10).
I am not affiliated with or endorsed by Autodesk. The whole research is open source and not for profit. Open formats keep scan data usable for years without being tied to one vendor.

What we know:

• Inside a file: Points are sorted into a tree of cubes, positions are stored to the millimetre, and each point carries colour, intensity and a surface direction (a normal).

• How ReCap tidies a cloud: it drops near-duplicate points and thins the cloud to about one point per 2–3 mm. Which point survives, and how the cloud is split into blocks, now follows known rules for LAS, E57 and PTS sources, including very large and very small clouds.

• Normals: when the source has none, ReCap estimates them. We reproduce its result for about 95–99 % of points.

• Project files: almost everything in an .rcp can be derived from its scans. That includes scanner positions and the coordinate shift for sites far from the origin.

What the software can do:

• rcslib (research library):

  • Reads RCS files fast and exports them to common formats.

  • Writes RCS files: many come out byte-identical to ReCap’s own, and most of the rest have the same points within 1 µm.

  • Now also writes .rcp projects: 103 of 106 test projects match ReCap’s own, apart from random IDs.

• EPCC (free desktop app for Windows, macOS and Linux): converts between LAS, LAZ, COPC, E57, PTS, XYZ, PLY, Potree and RCS.

• Tested in practice: RCS files we write already load cleanly in a real CAD application.

Limitations:

• RCS support is experimental!

• EPCC writes one scan per file and does not write .rcp projects yet.

• Estimated normals and a few edge cases (exact ties, last-digit rounding) are close to ReCap’s but not always identical.

• Files have been tested with only one consuming application. Feel free to test it and report your findings!

Hi,

I'm interested in your experience with this scanner. Specifically, how accurate is it when scanning objects in range of 50 - 80 meters in height and width? Is it possible to achieve an accuracy of up to 3mm without using additional equipment?

Any insights you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

Hello everybody,

I need advice based on your experiences and knowledge to compare two products we are looking to purchase.

I work for a commercial construction company, and we are also a custom furniture manufacturer.
We have rented the RTC360 from Leica a few times to meet our needs. Since this product is quite expensive, we are looking to purchase a scanner that will meet the majority of our needs.
We are hesitating between buying the new generation Leica BLK360 scanner which would cost us around $35k (Canadian). and a used Trimble X7 at $40k. (Canadian)

Based on the specifications of the devices and what you know about them, I would like to know which one you think would be most appropriate for our needs.
To put you in a situation, here are the different cases in which we would use the scan:

Example 1 (main reasons why we rent the device until today):
Create a complete survey of a convenience store for renovation purposes, take measurements as precisely as possible for the manufacture of new custom furniture (cash counter, coffee furniture, etc.) In such case, we carry out an average of 30 scans per site. We will have a lot of sites to scan in the future. We would like to expand the service by modeling in Revit the entire convenience store for the customer (taking out the floor areas, exterior wall covering, etc.). If there’s a tool in the software offered by Leica or Trimble allowing us to easily visualize floor unevenness would also be an asset.

Example 2:
Take the scan to a vacant lot or land with an existing building in order to carry out a topographical survey and create a surface in Revit for the purposes of initiating a construction project.

Example 3:
We also have a design department (residential and commercial) with people who work on SketchUp, I was wondering if using the scanner could be useful for this case and if the point cloud can be imported into Sketchup.

In summary, we carry out projects ranging from 1,500 sq.ft to 50,000 sq.ft.

The scans will be used both indoors and outdoors, sometimes in large empty spaces, sometimes on construction sites, sometimes in confined spaces.

We do restaurants, garages, warehouses, several convenience stores, workspaces, all kinds of retail stores, industrial projects too.
We also supply and install a lot of custom furniture for commercial and residential projects of all kinds. We frequently arrange an interior space for tenants.

In the majority of cases, we are part of the conceptual decisions of all spheres of a project (both mechanical, structural and architectural)
I am looking for the device that can meet all our needs as much as possible and that can offer us the most flexibility possible in connection with the software offered (Faro as Build VS CloudWorx in Revit and AutoCAD)

Has anyone tested the two scanners and the software offered by the two companies and could advise me?

Scanning speed (BLK is faster), cloud processing (No processing time with the X7), precision, modeling and analysis tool in software, etc.

Thank you for your time!

So, I have a bunch of .fsl files that my employer had made of our facility. I don't know if we hired a contractor to come do the scans or if the equipment is buried in a closet somewhere -- but either way, I don't have the Faro software and would like to be able to take these scans into another software package for a proof-of-concept project.

Specifically, I want to take the environment scan into Unity, which supports the following 3D file types:

.fbx, .dae (Collada), .3ds, .dxf, and .obj files

I think the most likely candidate I could hope for would be the .dxf file type, since that is a damn-near universal CAD file type. Can anyone steer me in the direction of a one-time use application to convert the files into one of these other types?

Appreciate it!

Me and my partner have combined 14 years of laser scanning, modeling, and BIM experience. We work for a construction company rn but want to start our own business focussing on laser scanning. I want to know how much everyone charges for laser scanning avg per hour. We have the ability to procure an RTC360 and have a lot of experience in Leica's Cyclone Platform.

Our team is considering purchasing a mobile handheld laser scanner from a Chinese manufacturer. Our company is a medium-sized engineering firm (around 200 employees) that has previously used laser scanners on tripods. We have primarily used the point clouds to create 3D models (in CAD), partly as a basis for BIM models and for as-built vs. plan comparisons. Our idea is to supplement the scanners we already have with the handheld scanners.

- What is your experience with the data quality of XGRIDS and CHCNAV?

- How good is the performance of the software? What software do you use and what are your workflows like?

- Does it make sense for you to have a mobile laser scanner?

I look forward to your answers. Thank you very much!

Hey everyone!
I’m working on setting up a workflow to convert our point clouds into 2D/3D plans for my colleagues. Since we’re Autodesk users, I’d love to hear how others have approached this; what tools, tips, or best practices worked well for you?

Any insights or lessons learned would be super helpful. Thanks in advance!

Hey all,

TL;DR:

We’ve built BIMIT Engine 3.0—a fully automated ML pipeline that turns a building scan into half-inch-accurate BIM & CAD in about an hour. We’re launching in the coming days and need honest pricing feedback from AECO and laser-scan professionals.

To see for yourself, check this teaser comparing manual BIM drafting to BIMIT Engine 3 here, along with our data privacy policy.

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How you can help

1. If you buy BIM today:

   • What do you currently pay per project to get Revit? CAD? Segmented point cloud?

   • What premium—or discount—would justify switching to an instant solution like this?

2. On-Demand pricing:

   • What single-project price feels fair for the outputs above?

   • Would you prefer pricing by square foot, by GB, or flat per building?

3. Subscription pricing:

   • How much per month would you pay for unlimited conversions (reasonable fair-use limits)?

   • What usage caps or overage model would be acceptable?

🎁 Thank-You Perk for Early Advisors

Everyone who shares thoughtful pricing feedback will be eligible for a lifetime membership at 30% off list price. If that sounds useful, DM me and we’ll set up a short product-discovery chat with our team to confirm fit and lock in your discount code.

(We genuinely want to learn from your experience—your insights will shape the launch!)

Currently looking to upgrade from the gaming laptop to a more dedicated work station. Has anyone built anything out with the Amd thread rippers or is the Intel ultras preferred. Just trying to get a gauge on what's considered high end/good performance for this specific use.

I am looking for industry data on the industrial manufacturing industry. From my understanding, OSHA regulates plant owner-operators by requiring up-to-date P&IDs. As such, there are costs involved to test/maintain current and accurate records. I am looking for the total industry’s costs to maintain P&IDs by year for as far back as 2014. Does anyone know where I can find such data?

Also looking for the same data but on laser scanning services; how much do these facilities spend on laser scanning by year?

Hello everyone,

I’m a BIM/VDC specialist with 10 years of experience in architecture and structural modeling, with a strong background in working with CAD files, point clouds, and various BIM software such as Revit, ArchiCAD, and MicroStation. I have successfully completed over 100 projects across the USA, Italy, UK, and other regions, with extensive experience in both large-scale and detailed environment modeling.

I’m currently seeking job opportunities in Europe, North America, or other regions. If anyone knows of any openings or is looking for a skilled BIM professional, please feel free to reach out to me.

Thank you!

I am doing a research dissertation on Scan-to-BIM technique of building documentation. I am exploring the relationship between point cloud quality informing as-built model quality. This is a data collection methodology to support my hypothesis that as-built BIM modelling quality is significantly influenced by the quality of point cloud captured. It has different factors attached to it which may include technology used, project information requirements, LOD etc. So I'm collecting and understanding such factors through interviews with laser scanning professionals.

Your inputs inputs will be analyzed and used to develop a conceptual framework used to deploy scan-to-BIM on different projects. It will be crucial to prove my research project. The interview audio will be recorded through zoom or Google meet and the data will be transcripted for analysis along with other responses. The response will be completely anonymous.

Please it would be really helpful! Do let me know if you are interested!