3D Scanning Comes in Hand for Huge Manufacturing Plant Job

Our biggest 3D scanning job yet in terms of square footage, may have been a tire manufacturing plant on the East Coast. The client asked us to scan a nearly 1 million-square-foot factory in preparation for construction of an expansion.

The interior space consisted of manufacturing equipment, process piping and mechanical equipment. Some of the pipes measured 16 inches in diameter.

Using two FARO Focus3D scanners, our crews collected 850 3D scans of the interior and one exterior wall.

One side of the building, nearly 1/2 mile long was called the ‘match line’. This area was important as it was where all the existing structural steel, overhead cranes, and process critical MEP would be tied in with the newly constructed expansion.

We captured extra 3D scans in the match line area on both inside and outside. This 3D scanning took us just 15 days including survey control.

Next, we processed the scans into a point cloud in the new Autodesk ReCap software package.

From there, we delivered the file in that format to the project engineers and contractor. This meant they could easily work with the point cloud model natively in Revit and Navisworks. It also served as a basis for 3D clash detection and design verification.

Impressed with the quality of our 3D scanning, they have since moved forward with designing the plant expansion, confident that new mechanical systems will tie seamlessly into the existing.