On Point with Historic Preservation: Point Clouds for Old Buildings

THOMAS KEMP: So this is On Point with Historic Preservation, Point Clouds for Old Buildings. Is my clicker working? No, my clicker is not working. And my mouse is not working.

OK, so learning objectives-- understand the benefits and pitfalls of working with laser scans and point clouds. We're going to look at a historic preservation project. Learn how to specify and procure laser scan services. Understand level of accuracy specifications. And we'll get into Revit and learn some best practices for working efficiently there. So that's great.

So a couple of housekeeping things. If you haven't already silenced your cell phone, please do that. And then, we feel like we've got a lot of information to get through. But we're going to try and save five minutes or so at the end questions and answers. So if you could save those for the end, that would be great.

So who are we? My mouse is not working. I've got with me today Will Hirschfeld. Will is a mobile mapping project lead with Precision Point based in Indianapolis. He's got certification in unmanned aircraft. So he flies drones. And Will comes to the scanning industry by way of hybrid seed corn. We are from Indiana. There was never any doubt.

WILL HIRSCHFELD: That's still not a very common transition.

THOMAS KEMP: No.

WILL HIRSCHFELD: I'll tell you a little bit about Precision Point. We were established in 2009. So we're a reality capture service provider. We focus on AEC industry. We utilize a number of reality capture methods. So we use static tripod based laser scanners. We also utilize some mobile scanning technology. And we specialize in scan to beam workflow.

You've already met Tom. But I'll go through some of the statistics here. He has lots of experience, including over 14 years in Revit. Tom's the go-to guy at RATIO. Fields a lot of internal questions from their Revit users.

THOMAS KEMP: And we've also got Matt Nichols with us. He's an architect with me at RATIO. He's got experience in higher ed, hospitality. He's one of our power Revit users. And he was involved with the project that we're going to take a look at today, as the project architect. So I brought him along to talk about that.

So a little bit about who RATIO is. We were founded in 1982. Based in Indianapolis, we've got four offices in Chicago, Champagne, and Raleigh, North Carolina, practicing across the United States and in Asia. We're over 150 employees now. And I've got a quiz for Matt, if you can name all seven of our in-house disciplines.

MATT NICHOLS: There's architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, historic preservation, interior design, economic development, and graphic design.

THOMAS KEMP: There you go. Got it. So we'd like to know who we have with us today. So architects? Engineers? What about interior designers? Andy of those? A few. Anyone in the construction side? What about owners? Anyone work in the laser scanning industry? A few. So for who else competition may be?

MATT NICHOLS: Friends. Friendly competition.

THOMAS KEMP: So to kind of break down the session for you today, we're going to look at a case study. And we kind of broke that into two parts. The first part, we're going to walk through some things that could have gone a lot better. Some things that, to be honest, we didn't do the right thing. We didn't implement best practices. And then we'll go through some kind of overall benefits and pitfalls.

Will will take us through some procurement considerations and also take a look at standards for a level of accuracy specifications, so a way to specify a laser scan. I'll take a look at some best practices for working with point clouds in Revit. And then we'll wrap it up with the end of that case study and look at some things that we use the point cloud for that we just wouldn't have been able to do that project if we hadn't had that point cloud data.

WILL HIRSCHFELD: Thanks, Tom. So as Tom mentioned, I've been working on this project, bottle works, bottling plant project in Indianapolis, Indiana, for over a year. It was a Coca-Cola bottling plant originally built in 1931. And our project includes the renovation, restoration, and addition to the existing building, adding a third story.

It's a mixed-use development, tied together with 140 key boutique hotel. And it anchors the end of the Cultural Arts District in Indianapolis. So it's sort of a boom for that area.

So this is the site. You can see our building is sort of this area here. The rest of the site is going to be developed. But mainly for this project, we focused on the hotel building itself.

It's a 285,000 square foot existing two-story building. The original portion was built in 1930. And it was added onto in the early '40s and again in the late '40s with the largest addition. At the time, it was said to be the largest bottling plant in the world. So Coca-Cola was really hedging their bet on bottling moving forward.

You can see this black area on the north side of the building. It houses a bunch of bridge sized steel trusses, like 18 of them. And they actually hung the second floor from these trusses to allow the first floor to be column free. So that was pretty sort of innovative for the time. But it did sort of complicate our process moving forward. We'll get more into that later.

We added a 50,000 square foot integrated rooftop addition. Since this is part of the National Historic Register, we had to follow a bunch of stringent guidelines and regulations. And so we kind of had to play into that.

I'm going to sort of shift to some images here behind me. You'll see some original photos and drawings as I sort of talk through this. But this building constantly reminds me of Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory or something. I mean, the fact that they spent the amount of money that they did with marble walls, ornate terrazzo floors, bronze doors and grills. And it's just an amazing work of art.

So part of this is to restore it and bring it back to its former glory, while also making it useful. The existing documentation we have is limited. And we have these drawn incomplete set of documents, along with some historic preservation specialists that sort of looked into the history and research.

You can see the original character and prominence. It's not super well documented. I mean, you see drawings, but we had one set of wall sections. We had you know maybe a floor plan that was incomplete. So our documentation wasn't all there. You can see the original lobby and how they had the bottling equipment displayed. There you can see it on the bottom portion here in the plan.

So our documentation wasn't complete. You can see the existing condition as it stands and what we needed to do to bring it back. So during this process, the owner hired another architect to do some clipboard verification. Go out with a tape measure and sort of measure it out and put together a CAD plan.

What we found was that these plans seem to be inconsistent. And there were some problems level to level and structural conditions, exterior walls. But we did base our conceptual SD models to sort of do a test fit layout and understand square footages defined key counts.

So ultimately, when we decided these field measurements were not reliable, we got a laser scan. And so this you can see is our sort of CAD plan brought it in to Revit. And that's our laser scan overlaid. And what we realized, so from the origin here on the right, you can see it sort of lines up pretty well. You can see that noise on the floor there.

But the farther you get to the north of these different editions, the buildings get farther and farther out of square and sort of out of alignment. So the structure is off by about a foot. You can see some of these columns don't line up. The exterior wall is off. And we're trying to knife in and needle in these guest rooms and get as many as we can. It was really important have accuracy.

So what we decided to do ultimately was to reconcile this completely to Revit. And so Tom is going to sort of come up, and we're going to run through some of this in Revit. It's sort of a double edged sword that we reconciled with everything completely to the point cloud.

Because it's a 90-year-old building, tolerances weren't the same. I mean, you know existing construction, nothing is perpendicular, nothing is parallel. And Revit doesn't like that. So it generates a lot of errors and sort of problems moving forward with documentation.

So as you can see Tom here, he's putting together an area of our existing conditions with the point cloud. None of these walls are perpendicular and parallel. And at the time, we sort of ran with it, thinking this is going to be great. We need everything to be perfect. And as we got to a point where, we couldn't really turn back, we realized this was probably a mistake.

So when you try to dimension things, because they're not perpendicular in parallel, you can't run strings or dimensions across walls, because it won't let you. You have to sort of do workarounds. It can sort of show you that it doesn't work. So you get an error, and it won't let you place a dimension.

We did find workarounds to make it work. And you know, we have completed construction documents. But it was a bit of hard document.

The other thing with elevation and sections-- oh, gotcha, thank you-- the other thing with elevations in sections, if you put an elevation here, you can see that it's parallel to the wall. And so whatever's showing on that wall will show up just find in your documentation. But if you wanted to do one on the other side or on the adjacent wall, it's no longer parallel or perpendicular to that wall surface and things don't show correctly. And it just causes problems, not only for us, but for the future with construction.

So with that, I'll let Tom sort of take it away and sort of discuss some of the benefits and pitfalls that we've sort of run into.

THOMAS KEMP: So kind of taking a step back and looking at overall dimensions and pitfalls of working with Point Cloud. So first of all accuracy-- and this is something that we've had projects with Point Cloud in our teams. And so my question is, how can we trust that's right? How do I know if that's right? Hopefully, Will takes us through the spec and how we spec that out. We know that it's right. We know that it's accurate. So when we're working with complex space like that office space, we know what's there.

Another benefit is virtual site visit. And we'll plug into this and [INAUDIBLE] we have a physical for site from desk and not have to make multiple trips out, not miss that one dimension if we need to get things to work. Is my microphone on? Need it up higher? It's not on?

MATT NICHOLS: Nope.

THOMAS KEMP: Is it on now?

MATT NICHOLS: Nope.

THOMAS KEMP: [INAUDIBLE] All right. Is that better? Sorry about that. So virtual site visit, being able to visit the site without ever leaving your desk.

Related to that is being able to get existing measurable conditions. So being able to measure directly from that point cloud, whether it be from the Point Cloud or from the virtual project viewer that we'll look at to verify things.

Then another benefit-- and this is going to vary depending on the project, depending on what your staff is, the scope of the project, the duration of the project, but laser scanning can be cheaper and faster than going out with clipboard and a tape measure if got to make multiple trips out there, check things, come back to the office.

WILL HIRSCHFELD: Especially on a project like this, it was so ornate. There was a lot going on. It would have taken too long.

THOMAS KEMP: So some pitfalls, accuracy again. And we already saw this. What we need to do is generate design intent drawings. We don't need to document precisely what's out there in the field necessarily. So that's a pitfall that we kind of fell into with that project that you need to be aware of.

Then over-modeling, and we did manage to avoid this for the most part. I kind of picked this image here because it demonstrates a couple of things. There's this railing in the front that's kind of an ornate art deco railing. And we didn't need to show that, we didn't need to necessarily document that anywhere. We weren't doing anything with that other than cleaning it. So we just put a rail in, just a regular Revit railing in.

The flip side is that bronze door there. We did need to show that in a couple elevations. So we went ahead and generated a family for that.

But it's really easy. You've got that Point Cloud. It shows everything. It's real easy to fall in that trap and just start modeling everything.

Another pitfall is just the file size. We're going to collect millions of points, billions of points. Whatever. It's going to take a lot space. Your IT department might have something to say about that. Point Clouds for this project where about 500 gigabytes.

And then scheduling a third party. So the hardware's got cheaper. The software got cheaper. But really you've got to have an expert that knows how to run it, knows how to get scans that register accurately with each other. So we've always gone out to a third party. So you bring someone, like Will and Precision Point, in, fitting them into the project's schedule, having it timed so you get that data when you need it to do your design work.

All right, so I'm going to let Will talk a little bit about procurement, how we go about getting laser scans. Something that I don't know if we did a great job on this project. But we learned a lot.

WILL HIRSCHFELD: So we learned a lot. So [INAUDIBLE] something that really needs partnership between architect or whoever is acquiring laser scans and the service provider. So the first step would be to make sure you're speaking the same language.

So I don't know if you guys remember this expression. But two guys are talking. They're pretty sure that they know what each other wants. But one guy is looking for [INAUDIBLE] other guy is [INAUDIBLE] I don't think we had to many situations like that.

THOMAS KEMP: No, no, we're totally on the same page.

WILL HIRSCHFELD: So that's our [INAUDIBLE] lead to a number of issues. It also can lead to a large amount of risk that can be incurred by the owner, architect, [INAUDIBLE]. A lot of that risk is being kind of accumulating because when you don't have the spec for laser scan services, the pricing of those services get out of whack. So when there's no spec, a lot times the--

MATT NICHOLS: We're just striking out over here.

WILL HIRSCHFELD: Yeah, so without a specification, it's hard for the service provider to actually bid those service. And then without a specification, it's also hard for the requester of those services to know what they're getting paid for.

As a service provider, we deal with expectations of the client quite a bit. So often laser scan is very cutting edge technology. A lot of the architects have high expectations. Tom has high expectations. But I've gotten on the same level. So he's going to get-- a lot of times a client has expectations, but their budget may only be able to afford two guys with a tape measure.

So just that communication, make sure I can provide what Tom wants and Tom wants what I'm providing. Those unmet expectations are often derived from the poor communication.

So the biggest tool I'm about to address here in the US IBD level of accuracy specifications. Have you guys heard of US IBD? Cool. That's good.

So [INAUDIBLE] has an LOA specification. So he can think of the level of development in the model LOA would be similar. It's a flexible and easy to use standard. It has metric and imperial values. And it's nice because it suggested ranges of accuracy. So if you're a new user to laser scanning data, it kind of points you in the direction of how you should specify your services, just by the most common specifications.

We've done a number of job for RATIO. We might be a little hypocritical by like laying this out perfectly for you guys, saying, this is how you should do it. This is how you should do it. It's not always how we did it.

THOMAS KEMP: No, it's not.

WILL HIRSCHFELD: This kind of just came organically that Tom knows it's most helpful if you have a model provided to us before we start the scanning. If you have any missing documents, that would really help to us before we did the job.

Also, any information that an architect can give us about the deliverable. They expect color point clouds. We need to do color scanning. So that takes twice as long and is probably twice as expensive.

Also, Tom and the whole team love the online viewer of the 360 degree images. They got lucky because this job was just down the street from your guys's office. But that makes it even worse sometimes. If it's close you, end up going out there a lot. But you were able to coordinate in meetings around the imagery.

I think you told me once that if you didn't have those online images, it might be worth not scanning at all.

THOMAS KEMP: Yeah, that's true.

WILL HIRSCHFELD: Very useful, super digestible to other users as well.

THOMAS KEMP: Yeah, that online viewer, that's that virtual site visit. And I've got a sample that later in the presentation that we'll look at. But that's Matt and the team working on the project had that open all the time when they're working on it, super useful and during coordination meetings.

So before you move on from that, so as architects, we wouldn't complete a project without a specification. But for some reason when we have gone for laser scan services, we're a little inconsistent with that. So we've had some bad experiences getting laser scans. We would go out and were a lot of times stuck with the lowest cost provider, which is not always someone, like Precision Point, that is going to work with us and give us what we need.

So it's important we've learned through experience to have that specification. So that's two parts, that scope of work document that outlines what we're looking for, what models we're going to provide, all that kind of information. And then the level of accuracy specification document to really document exactly what we're looking for.

WILL HIRSCHFELD: Yeah, so establishing that level of accuracy. It again goes back to a conversation between the architect and the service provider. So you can figure out when is close enough close enough. And really close enough typically depends on the intent of the data being collected. So if you intend to scan this room just to do floor plans, that's going to be a different specification, unless you'd want to model all this casework on the walls. So that intent really does drive the process, so that acceptable form of measurement really comes down to what you plan to do with the data.

So this is the document. And I'm going to go through a couple of reasons why it's important for you to use this. It's actually a document that was created by service providers, like us, and including Precision Point and some industry leaders. So this is a free document basically, so that it can guide anybody that's looking to procure laser scanning services and helps architects and service providers.

So just because of the nature of how laser scan data is collected and how it collects everything that's within its line of sight, this level of accuracy specification is very important, because it helps guide architects or BIM specialists, who are left with making decisions on how to model from the Point Cloud.

So in the top there, you see a pipe that's being modeled orthogonally, so that there is a 90 degree connection in the corner. It's a nice and watertight connection. But when you look to the point cloud, you can see that there's a section here where it's not fitting the point cloud exactly. So those are those real world out of plumb conditions that we all know exist on new buildings and old buildings.

So within that LOA accuracy specification, it's a range. So it gives BIM specialists a range of accuracy to work within. So it guides them in knowing in a case-to-case basis whether they should follow the point cloud to the t or if they should best fit it so that you have more of those parallel and perpendicular situations with walls, columns, MEP, etc.

THOMAS KEMP: Yeah, using it as a design and as a guideline rather than directly copying it. You kind of have to make that decision based on what you're going for.

WILL HIRSCHFELD: Here's another representation of how columns are placed, using the point cloud. You know, you take your view range down to a very thin slice. In this example, this section up here is very close to the ground. So maybe when you place that column from that section of point cloud, you've got a perfectly aligned point cloud. You're really happy with your fit. And then you double check that fit by raising your section or your view range a couple of feet. And you see that it doesn't fit anymore.

So you're once again experiencing those out of plumb real world conditions that are captured by the laser scanner what you need to know about, but maybe you don't actually have to represent it that way. So this LOA guides you in how you can accurately represent your existing conditions and gives you a little direction in how that should be modeled.

It's kind of same situation with concealed conditions. So with the way laser scanners capture a space just by line of sight, you're going to get those uneven surfaces on fire suppression, around structural steel. You'll have to make the decision whether it's important to best fit and then kind of thickness unknown, size unknown, and fit it within that fire proofing.

THOMAS KEMP: Yeah, or in the case of the case study, just concealed conditions in general, structure behind walls, things like that, you just have to use existing documentation. But you have to understand that it's a guess.

WILL HIRSCHFELD: Yep. So there are a few things that the LOA does not define. And that's actually something I like about the LOA. So there's some room for me to make decisions as a service provider on the best way to do something.

So actual methods for acquiring the data aren't defined by the LOA. So as long as you're meeting the specifications, the method is left up to you. So that's determined by the documentation professional. There's not explicit levels of accuracy, or rather it defines ranges of accuracy. And it does not define quality control procedures, only a QA levels, and then cost benefit or savings from laser scanning. So that's left up to the specifier.

So this is the actual document. And we'll get into it here. There's a few things to note here. So these yellow cells that are highlighted, those are to the CSI UniFormat element. So that the shell of the building, the structure of the building, that's relating to the level of accuracy of each element. And the yellow cells are the suggested levels of accuracy for those elements. And then I'll talk a little bit more about these two boxes. So LOA does specify a measured accuracy and represented accuracy.

So for this project, RATIO did their own model. If you were to bring in a third party to do any modeling for you, you could specify the represented accuracy of those Revit elements that are modeled from the point cloud.

THOMAS KEMP: So I want to emphasize that. So the blue box, if you just want a laser scan in a point cloud delivered, it's the blue column here. If you want someone like Will or someone else, another third party, to generate a model from that, it would be this green section here. So the spec works for both situations.

WILL HIRSCHFELD: Yep. Thanks, Tom. So we're zoomed in here under this section of the LOA values. So LOA 10 to LOA 50, 50 being the highest level of accuracy, , also the most expensive because it requires a lot of scanning and a lot of checking. LOA 10 being the lowest level of accuracy is undefined. So like we said earlier, it depends on the intended use of the scan data.

And these are just minimums. So you know, being the suggested range for this project was LOA 20, we exceeded the LOA on this project. So when we checked the registered scan data to do the survey control on site, we were closer to the LOA 30 of the 1/4 inch accuracy.

This is measured versus represented, like Tom and I covered earlier. And then this is the recommended level of accuracy and suggested most commonly used recommendations, LOAs. But if you haven't specified laser scanning accuracy before, this is probably where you should start. So stick to the recommendation.

With the LOA, there are validation methods. So you can specify your level of accuracy. Then you can specify how that accuracy is validated. So for a quick scan that the intended use of the measurement accuracy may not be a concern for you, you can do it a no data check for that measured accuracy.

But most of the time with laser scanning, we're at least using two checks to validate the accuracy of the method. And normally, that's overlapping data sets between two scans. And then often it's in conjunction with survey control. So we'll use that to bring everything all together. And then we can double check the registration between the static laser scans and the survey control.

You can also do validations on the modeled elements as well. So there's represented elements where you can run analysis through third-party software. You can also use old drawings or a separate model to validate the representation of those elements.

So speaking on the software portion of the validation, this is some software that is actually running a deviation map. So you can calculate the deviation between the Revit floor. If you look at this floor, it's sloping to drains. So it's tricky getting that floor to slope directly to the point cloud. But you can slope the floor to the best of your abilities, bring in the point cloud, run that deviation analysis.

The analysis highlights the areas where you maybe didn't represent it most accurately. So you can go into those area, add nodes, adjust it accordingly. So that you're within the specification of your required LOA. So it's color coded by LOA levels. So this is great to use internally to check models. And it's also great to check models created by third parties.

So I think we're going to get back into bottle works now that we've got our LOA specified, we understand accuracy levels. And Tom's going to show you some more Revit tips and tricks.

THOMAS KEMP: All right. Thanks, Will. So before we jump into Revit, a few things to be aware of. So when we link that point cloud file into Revit, it's going to behave just like any other model element. It's going to cut and plan and section in detail. It's going to show up in 3D views and all that. And if we really want to, we can snap to it. So we can pick a point in the point cloud and actually snap to it.

File format, so this is something that in that scope of work document you would probably want to outline what file format you want. Revit will work with RCP or RCS files. Those are native ReCap file formats. The RCP format includes all the scan positions and the 360 imagery. So those tend to be a little larger than RCS files. So the RCS files are going to perform a little better in Revit. So our recommendation is typically to work with those RCS files.

You've also got all this long list of files here. Those are proprietary file formats from different scan providers, hardware-software providers that Revit will read.

The other thing to be aware of is-- and this is something that we outline in our scope document when we look for a scan-- is how that scan is going to link to our Revit model. Usually, we have a Revit model started by the time we get a scanner involved. So we provide that model to them. And we ask that their scans link back to our model, origin to origin.

So they manipulate that scan from whatever survey location they have and locate it, do a best fit based on our model origin, so that when we share those scanned files with the team, our MEP engineer, our structural engineer, everyone can just link those in origin to origin. You don't have to move them around, manipulate them in any way.

Then, the virtual site visit, so this is big when you're working in Revit. And I kind of define this as being able to experience the building or the space and obtain accurate, physical, and dimensional information without physically traveling to the site. So looking at the project, in this case, in an online virtual project viewer.

So we saw a slide earlier of a pendant light fixture in the original lobby space. If I'm working on that space and I need to know how far that light fixture hangs down, I can go out to the site and measure it. But I'm not going to be able to reach it. Matt might be able to reach it.

MATT NICHOLS: Maybe.

THOMAS KEMP: He's a little taller. But I'm not going to be able to reach. So if I had to go out to the site, if it was really critical, I'd have to get some way to get up there and reach it, whatever. Or I can make a virtual site visit. So see if this plays.

So I'm going to log into my Project Viewer. Go to My Projects. Find a scan that I think I'm going to be able to see that light fixture in. So you're going to see here a plan with all the scan locations. So I'm going to dial into a scan location where I think I can see that light and go to the 360 imagery.

And once I'm in here, I can rotate around, look around, see the space, pretty much anything except for the space directly under the scanner, so where the tripod sat. And I think I can see it better from that scan up there. So I'm going to go up to that. And there's the fixture.

So once I find one I'm interested in, I can take a dimension and pick that point. Pick a point on the ceiling. And that's going to give me the distance between those two points. But then it will give me the x and the y, the horizontal and vertical between those two points.

So maybe something a little more critical-- I know Matt's done this in coordination meetings--

MATT NICHOLS: Several times--

THOMAS KEMP: Structural engineers, MEP engineers, you know, something a little more critical than the height of a pendant fixture, but to be able to go and verify that without ever leaving my desk-- you know, I'm working in this right alongside Revit. So that's a big benefit.

WILL HIRSCHFELD: And I think there's a benefit to that also, because all those same things you saw Tom do in a video, you can do it ReCap. But you need to have ReCap on your computer. ReCap consumes a lot of resources. That being web-based, it's just a web page. It's over on another monitor. You're not chewing up a bunch of RAM on your computer.

And there's a lot of permission levels associated with that. So it's easy to share. You can let somebody else use it whose only used Google Street View, and they can figure it out.

THOMAS KEMP: Yeah, so the first thing we do when we have someone new to the team on a project where we've got a laser scan, we give them access to that, show them how to use it.

Again, I'm going to touch on file storage again. Files are big. It's just a lot of data. You're going to need someplace to put it, on your network, on your local drive, whatever. How are you going to work with that? How are you going to get it to the rest of the team? Probably not going to email it-- [LAUGHTER] probably not. If you've got a lot of time, you might share it over something like Dropbox. But if you don't mind getting those on Friday. So how are you going to deal with that?

Then the other aspect is your network bandwidth. Will your network bandwidth handle moving that amount of data when you're loading Revit files and stuff efficiently?

So we've had a couple projects where we just put the data on a USB drive. And we've got one person on the team actively working with point clouds. And they've got the USB drive. Other projects, we've just copied the point clouds to the local C drive on whoever's on the team, copy it to their machine. The path is the same for everyone and work with it that way. But it's something you've got to consider and figure out how you're going to handle.

So I'm going to try and jump into Revit and look at that. We made it to Revit once, hopefully we can do it again. But we're going to look at a few things-- worksets, setting up some dedicated views, some View Template settings, and then some Snap settings. So let's see if we can get there.

WILL HIRSCHFELD: And, Thomas, this is something you do personally for users in the office before the project even gets off the ground?

THOMAS KEMP: Right, so this is something that our BIM specialists when we've got a project where we've got point clouds, the BIM specialist on the project would set this up for the team. So on this project, I set this up for Matt and the rest of the team working on the project, walk them through how to work with it, so that they can be efficient.

So for starters, we want to set up some separate worksets for our point clouds. So many of you may set up worksets for different length files, whatever, same thing with point clouds. We want to set up a separate workset for point clouds.

We've got these set up by level. That's typically how it shakes out. So I've got each level of point clouds on a separate workset. And the key here is the last column all the way to the right, Visible in all views. You want to uncheck that. I want to tell Revit it the specific views, the dedicated views where I want to see my point clouds. I don't want to in all my floor plans.

WILL HIRSCHFELD: And I think, Tom, I didn't touch on this, but that's important to communicate to your service provider that you're going to be working with it that way, because we deliver RCS files, RCP files by level. So that, you know, that 500 gigabytes that Tom was talking about, that wasn't a one big point cloud. That was probably a dozen point clouds. And then we break them up by level and by zone, so that if you didn't have that segmentation of the point cloud, it would be hard to work right that way.

THOMAS KEMP: Right. Thanks, Will. So you can see over here in my project browser, I've got some dedicated views for each level. We also got some RCP, some ceiling plan views, and even some section views specifically for working on the point cloud. So if I'm working on the model and I'm doing some work developing the existing model, I'm working in those views primarily, where I can see the point cloud.

And then we set up some specific View Templates. So I'll jump in here. So kind of three specific settings that we'll look at, actually four specific settings we'll look at. So first the workset setting again to follow up on that. Here, in the View Template, we control the View Template for those point clouds.

So we've just got a point cloud that we use for all the levels. And then we turn the point clouds, those worksets, to visible. So we kind of coach the users, if you're working on the first floor, open the point cloud for the first floor. Open that workset. Make the other worksets closed. You don't need those.

WILL HIRSCHFELD: You can bog down your machine if you have them all open at once, especially on this size.

THOMAS KEMP: So the View Template just shows whatever worksets you have on. But the user would individually control the one they're working on.

Then the Point Cloud Visibility settings, can get in here. So here's all my individual RCS files. We'll see when we jump back to PowerPoint, if I had an RCP in here, I would have another level to this tree where I would see all the individual scan locations. So if that was something you needed to see in your project, you can work with RCP. The RCS just falls out as it as a single scan.

And I've got control over that the color here. So a few different options, they come in is RGB. So whatever color that this is captured with the scan, that's what you're going to see. If you spec black and white scans, like we did on this project, it's going to come in as grayscale. If you've got a color scan, you'll see a color point cloud.

What we typically do is set this to single color. And then depending on what we're doing, color the individual point clouds different colors. And we'll look at that. I'll jump back to the plan.

Elevation, intensity, normals, when we get back to the PowerPoint, I've got a slide that kind breaks out what all those are-- different ways to color things based on either the elevation or the intensity of what was captured with the laser.

So I'm going to jump back to the plan here just so you can see we've got this-- we'll zoom in. There we go.

So I've got my first floor scans colored as red. My exterior scan was a separate scan as colored is blue. And then I've got some basement scans I think coming through here. You can see a little bit of green and a little bit of magenta. So I can tell which scan those points are coming from based on the color.

Then see the model display is actually not controlled by the View Template. So I've got that unchecked here. And there's a couple of ways to handle this. I like to do it with a model display.

And basically, what that lets me do-- if I can zoom in here, if Revit will continue to cooperate-- what that lets me do is toggle between a hidden line view and a wireframe view as I'm working. So I may want to see-- and these walls all lined up pretty accurately-- I may want to see how my wall's lining up with the points in the cloud. And it's helpful to toggle between wireframe and a hidden line view to see how I'm aligned with the points.

WILL HIRSCHFELD: When I got into some of the documentation that was more sensitive, I ended up using transparencies on items to just to see through the materials, rather than changing the model display.

THOMAS KEMP: Right. That'd be another option to set in your View Template, in your visibility graphics overrides. Just set your transparency for your wall.

Then the last thing that we control here in the View Template is the View Range. And you'll see I've actually got three different View Templates going on here. And they're basically three different view ranges.

So what you want to do when you're working with the View Template, when you're working with the point cloud in Revit, is to take a thin slice through that point cloud. So you can see what you're modeling. You can see up in the corner here all of the points on the floor, through the floor, coming through. If I had my View Range going to the floor, which is what is the default in Revit, I get all the points from the floor, showing through my floor plan. And it just creates a lot of clutter.

So on this project kind of what we start with is set up three View Templates with different view ranges. And I typically would start with one that's 2 foot off the floor, one that's 5 foot off the floor, one that's 8 foot off the floor. And that's just 2 foot off the floor cuts through any casework, any equipment, plumbing fixtures, that kind of thing. 5 foot off the floor gets me up above that, but still cutting through doors. And then 8 foot is going to be up above most doors.

So you can see if I change this-- cancel that. If I pull this over here and change it to 5 foot and hit Apply, you can see this casework that is here existing. That's dropped out of our view. And now, we're up above this floor, and we can see what's going on. So rather than have the user set up or change that view range and manipulate that, we just set up some View Templates and have them toggle between those View Templates as they're working.

How we're doing on time? Pretty good.

So then the last couple of things here in Revit, one is pretty basic. Work with the thin lines. Toggle that off and on really to be able to see again how we're lining up based on how accurate we need to be, how closely we need to line up. We work with that so we can see that a little more clearly.

And then the big one that I know we had to coach our users on is to get in and actually change their Snap settings and pay attention to what's going on there. A lot of times, it's set what it's set and they leave it at that. So kind of three settings that I try to educate people on, the first is this Snapped Point Clouds here. So you probably want to work with that turned off.