Scan-to-BIM Cost: Typical Ranges and What the LOD Changes

Scan to BIM cost follows three things: the area and the stations the building needs, the level of development of the model, and how much of the building goes into it. Below are the typical ranges from recent projects, how the LOD and the scope move a price inside them, and what a quote needs. There is no rate per square foot, because area is one factor among several: a dense mechanical room and an empty warehouse bay of the same area are different models.

Typical ranges from recent projects

A house or an apartment, scanned and modeled in Revit, usually runs $2,000 to $4,500. Interiors together with the facades and the site, $2,500 to $5,000. An office or a commercial floor, $3,000 to $9,000, with several systems and a crowded plenum toward the upper end. Large buildings run from $12,000 and are quoted on their own. The registered point cloud alone, for a team that models in-house, starts at about $1,200, and a model built from a point cloud you already have is quoted on that cloud.

These are typical ranges from recent projects, and a specific building can land outside them. They say what a scan-to-BIM job costs in the usual case: a few thousand dollars for a house, an apartment or one floor, more when the building is large or the model is dense.

The level of development is the biggest lever

The BIMForum Level of Development Specification is the scale scan-to-BIM scopes usually cite. At LOD 200 an element is “generically and graphically represented within the Model with approximate quantity, size, shape, location, and orientation”, which makes a quick model for massing and feasibility. At LOD 300 the element is represented “such that its quantity, size, shape, location, and orientation can be measured”, which is what a renovation design is drawn against and the usual order. LOD 350 adds the element’s “interfaces with adjacent or dependent Model Elements”, the level the specification intends for construction-level coordination, and it is ordered for the elements that meet new work, not for the whole building.

Each step up means more modeling time per element. A wall at LOD 200 is a slab of approximate thickness in roughly the right place, while the same wall at LOD 300 carries its measured thickness, its openings at their measured positions and its real height to the structure above, and at LOD 350 the way it meets the slab and the columns. The specification says it does not prescribe a level for any step of a project, so a scope names the LOD per element category, and the quote lists the categories and their levels. The guides what BIM LOD 300 means and LOD 200 vs LOD 300 in scan-to-BIM show the difference on real elements.

Scope: what goes into the model

A basic model holds the architecture and the exposed structure: the walls, floors and roofs, the columns and beams, the doors, windows, stairs and ceilings. Adding the facades and the site extends it; adding the mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems above the ceiling is the largest addition in our scopes, because the systems are many and dense and the plenum has to be scanned with the tiles lifted to capture them. A model of a commercial floor with its systems sits toward the upper end of the range for that reason, and the MEP BIM page describes that scope.

The scan sets the other half of the price. A scanner of the Trimble X7 class takes one station in two to seven minutes without images, by its datasheet, and the building’s stations follow its rooms as much as its area: a floor with forty small rooms takes more stations than a warehouse bay with none, and the day on site is priced accordingly. Facades scanned from the street, roofs scanned from the roof and a plenum scanned through lifted tiles each add stations.

Accuracy and what it costs

The level of development says how far an element is developed; the U.S. Institute of Building Documentation’s Level of Accuracy guide says how close it is to the building, as a standard deviation at the 95 percent confidence level, and the BIMForum specification’s own level for existing conditions, LOD 500, requires that an element’s accuracy be noted. A typical scan-to-BIM model from us is represented at LOA30, between 15 mm and 5 mm. Tighter representation for a facade restoration or a millwork package means a denser scan and more modeling time, and the quote names the level with the LOD.

What the quote needs

A quote arrives within one business day of your sending the address, the LOD and the element categories you need, the Revit version your office works in, and any existing drawings. Photographs of the building help with the station count. The scan is then scheduled as soon as the project needs it, often within days of the order, and the model usually follows in two to three weeks for a house and four to eight weeks for a commercial floor or a whole building, depending on the LOD and the categories. The Scan-to-BIM page describes the deliverables and the workflow.

Sources

• BIMForum, Level of Development Specification 2023, Part I: the LOD 200, 300, 350 and 500 definitions.
• USIBD Document C120, Level of Accuracy Specification Guide, version 2.0 (2016): the LOA levels as standard deviations at the 95 percent confidence level.
• Trimble X7 3D laser scanning system datasheet: station durations.