At last year’s SPAR Conference, ClearEdge3D’s automated extraction of CAD models from point clouds stood out from the crowd as a much needed tool to aid productivity. A telling story of the progression of the productivity shift that has happened with the advent of LIDAR tools is that in the past a large project may have needed five surveyors in the field with just one CAD operator. When tripod-mounted LIDAR arrived that shifted to one or two field workers, and five CAD jockeys back in the office. That further shifts with mobile LIDAR to one or two operators in the field and twenty back in the office. With this change to heavier data processing burdens, and the increasing volumes of data that accompany the more advanced collection tools and methods, there’s an obvious and glaring need for quicker and more automated processes.
The ClearEdge product fits neatly into this area, because it ingests point cloud data and automatically extracts 3D Cad models, which is often the primary workflow of a LIDAR project. Instead of gee-whiz technology this year, the emphasis of the company was on real-world applications and case studies. While the technology was being highlighted in the 3D Technologies track, users of the technology were discussing their use of the tools in their data capture workflows in the Scan to BIM conference track. The users repeatedly emphasized the time savings that they gained by adopting this automated data extraction tool.
Among the case studies that the company touted was an application by Stantec Engineering on a road and rail crossing project in one of the busiest intersections in Calgary. The constant flow of traffic meant that laser scanning was the only real option for data collection from both a safety and least amount of disruption perspective. The firm estimates that the ClearEdge tool pared down the time it tool to create the model from one week down to just four hours.
Another cased study was in the capture of a large federal building in Chicago by Ghafari Associated. There the adoption of the technology meant the elimination of redundant modeling steps to provide access to the data much more quickly. In this case, the time from scan to model was critical as the time to deliver the model was compressed. The scale and scope of this project was massive, with 500 scans of the building, and the delivery of a Revit model of the exterior and interior of the building complex.
In one year’s time, there were many more project examples across the board at this event. The company fought through the eastern snowstorms to make a delayed appearance at the event, and I’m sure they’re glad that they did. With their emphasis on productivity gains, with cost and time reductions on data processing, their product was very well received.
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