topic Re: scan to pointcloud to model in Inventor Forum

scan to pointcloud to model

johan.degreef — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 09:18:47 GMT

Hello, we do waste water projects, new and expanding existing sites. For those existing ones, an accurate model of the site could be very helpful. Does anyone here have experience in scanning a site, and import it into Inventor?

Where do we start? Have a 3rd party do the scan and get the model ready? Buy a device ourselves and do the scanning? Do we need extra software to convert the point cloud to an inventor model?

As you see, no experience here, and I would like to know more about this.

Many Thanks, Johan

Re: scan to pointcloud to model

Gabriel_Watson — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 17:42:20 GMT

Sometimes I see utilities work with a 2D model for the structures already in place, and just adding on top of the new design what will be installed as 3D. It is way more resource-friendly to have a 2D plan laid down for brownfield design than point clouds.

You can also think of using Navisworks as an integrator where all the point cloud data is geolocated with the Inventor content and there check for clashes/etc., and I've even seen Revit used for some of that too.

The goal is to eventually substitute everything with a proper 3D digital twin, even for previously-installed facilities, but you can reach that point slowly.

What you may need with point clouds is Autodesk Recap to open and reduce the size/granularity of the point cloud before importing it in Inventor. You need special cameras to capture the point cloud, and someone trained with it, but the files are usually a few GBs in size and need to be pre-processed. In Inventor you can also create clippings to reduce the area of interest, but again if you are looking at a whole site you might want to do that in Navisworks, or else you need to drop the resolution of those point clouds by a lot (and there might be several scans/files superimposed to build the full site).

Re: scan to pointcloud to model

sam — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 17:31:56 GMT

I use Dezignworks to scan parts directly inside of Inventor. It can create meshes inside Inventor during the scan process, which is awsome I must say. But you are needing to do something bigger than a simple part, so I am unsure if it would be the appropriate tool for the job. You could reach out to the good people at Dezignworks and they may be able to help or at least point you in the right direction. They are great people to work with and very knowledgable in the field of 3D scanning. I don't know if they do building size scans but I do know they do lots of cars and trucks.

Re: scan to pointcloud to model

johan.degreef — Mon, 11 Sep 2023 07:44:21 GMT

@Gabriel_Watson wrote:
Sometimes I see utilities work with a 2D model for the structures already in place, and just adding on top of the new design what will be installed as 3D. It is way more resource-friendly to have a 2D plan laid down for brownfield design than point clouds.

This is the way we do it now, if the 2D is available

Re: scan to pointcloud to model

admaiora — Mon, 11 Sep 2023 08:22:47 GMT

Our flow: have third party team to scan>then Recap> then import in Inventor/AUtocad to model /get references

SOmetimes poit cloud to meshed solid converted in Recap