3D Laser Scanning Deliverables: What You Receive

The question clients ask most often about 3D laser scanning services is what they will actually receive at the end: which files, in which formats, with which documents, and what each of them is for. The short answer is that the scan itself produces one thing, a registered point cloud with its report, and everything else is built on it to order. This guide lists the laser scanning deliverables of a project in the order they are produced, says what each one contains and what it does not, and explains which ones a given project needs.

The registered point cloud

Every laser scanning project delivers a registered point cloud. The scanner records a cloud of measured points from each position it stands on, and registration aligns those stations into one cloud in one coordinate system. A scanner of the Trimble X7 class, by its datasheet, measures up to 500,000 points a second with a 3D point accuracy of 2.4 mm at 10 m and 3.5 mm at 20 m (one standard deviation), and its stations are registered with a report that lists the average error per station, the overlap between scans and the consistency of the registration. The cloud is colored from the scanner’s cameras, cleaned of people and stray points, and delivered in two formats. E57 is the exchange format ASTM E2807 defines for 3D imaging data: one file holds the points, their color and intensity values and the photographs taken at each station, and every point cloud program in common use reads it. RCP/RCS is Autodesk’s indexed format, the only one Revit links as a point cloud, so a Revit user opens it without a conversion step. LAS or PTS come on request.

The cloud is the measurement, and it is what a design team orders when it models in-house. The guide to registered vs unregistered point clouds explains why a cloud has to come with its registration report to count as a deliverable, and the point cloud to Revit guide walks through linking it.

The registration report and the station images

The registration report is the document that makes the cloud trustworthy: it says how well each station fits the others and where the overlap was thin, so a reader knows which parts of the cloud to rely on. It comes with every cloud. With it come the panoramic images from each scan position, whenever the stations were photographed, which is the usual practice; they answer the questions a cloud cannot, what a nameplate or a sign said, what a small label read, what was stored in a room on the day of the scan, without a site visit.

As-built drawings

When the project needs sheets, they are traced from the cloud: floor plans, reflected ceiling plans, interior and exterior elevations, building sections, roof and site plans, in DWG and PDF, with the sheet saying which lines were measured and which were taken from other documents. The accuracy of the line work is stated in the U.S. Institute of Building Documentation’s Level of Accuracy terms, as a standard deviation at the 95 percent confidence level; a typical renovation set is drawn to LOA30, between 15 mm and 5 mm, and the quote names the level. The as-built drawings page describes the set and what it costs.

The Revit model

When the project designs in Revit, the same cloud becomes a model of the existing building at the level of development the scope names: LOD 300, in the BIMForum Level of Development Specification, where each element is represented “such that its quantity, size, shape, location, and orientation can be measured”, or LOD 350 where the model also shows the element’s “interfaces with adjacent or dependent Model Elements”, which the specification describes as the level for construction-level coordination. The model is delivered as a Revit file in the client’s version, or as IFC, the open standard ISO 16739-1:2024, or as an ArchiCAD file, together with the cloud it was built from; the mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems are added to it from the same scan where the ceiling tiles were lifted for the survey. The Scan-to-BIM and MEP BIM pages describe both.

The tour

A Matterport tour is a separate capture, made on the same visit when it is ordered with the scan: a browsable walk-through of the building, with a dollhouse view and a top-down floor plan view, hosted on Matterport’s platform under the terms quoted with it. A camera of the Matterport Pro3 class measures depth to about 20 mm at 10 m by its specifications, so distances can be read in the tour, and the laser scanner’s station images give the cloud its own panoramas, though not a walk-through. The 3D virtual tours page describes when a tour is the right record and when the scan is.

What is not delivered

A scan delivers surfaces. Hidden framing, reinforcement inside a slab, a pipe above a closed ceiling and the inside of a wall are not in the cloud, and the drawings and the model carry them from other documents, marked as unverified, until the building is opened. A laser scanning survey is not a licensed land survey: boundary, ALTA and stamped surveys are a licensed surveyor’s work, ordered separately, and the cloud can be tied to that surveyor’s control points when the project has them. A scan model is geometry; the flows and loads a design needs come from the engineer, who works on the measured base the scan supplies.

Which deliverables a project needs

A design team that models in-house needs the cloud, the report and the images. A renovation or a tenant improvement needs the drawings, and the model when the design is done in Revit. A building with no documentation at all is usually captured first as a cloud, sometimes with a tour, before anything changes, with the drawings and the model ordered as the project defines itself. The quote names the deliverables, their formats, the accuracy they are drawn or modeled to and their dates, and it arrives within one business day of your sending the address and a description of what the project needs. The 3D laser scanning page describes the scan itself; we scan in all 50 states.

Sources

• Trimble X7 3D laser scanning system datasheet: scan speed, 3D point accuracy, cameras, registration report.
• ASTM E2807, Standard Specification for 3D Imaging Data Exchange: the E57 file format.
• Autodesk Revit help: linked point clouds require indexed RCP or RCS files
• USIBD Document C120, Level of Accuracy Specification Guide, version 2.0 (2016): the LOA levels as standard deviations at the 95 percent confidence level.
• BIMForum, Level of Development Specification 2023, Part I: the LOD 300 and 350 definitions.
• buildingSMART, Industry Foundation Classes (IFC): an introduction, ISO 16739-1:2024
• Matterport, Pro3 camera technical specifications: depth accuracy.
• Matterport support: measuring dimensions in a Matterport space