Point clouds for better construction in existing buildings: ALLPLAN cooperates with laser scanning specialist Scalypso

New function for integrating point clouds in Allplan 2020 available.

Munich, 29 May, 2020 – ALLPLAN, an international provider of open BIM solutions, has entered into a partnership with laser scanning specialist Scalypso in order to make point cloud based working accessible to a wide range of users in a simple and practical form. As part of the cooperation, a plug-in was developed which is available in the current Allplan 2020 version.

Increasingly, laser scanners are being used to create measurements of existing buildings in a time-saving and precise manner. The result is dense point clouds, often comprising millions of individual points. With such amounts of data, it is difficult to keep track and distinguish relevant from irrelevant information. Another challenge is that there is a multitude of laser scanners from different manufacturers that store their data in different manufacturer-specific file formats.

"3D laser scanning is a powerful tool when it comes to documenting large and complex structures accurately. Especially for the BIM-based planning of existing structures it is an important basis to avoid planning errors and to reduce liability risks. We are therefore pleased that Allplan users now have a direct interface to the Scalypso application and can use the evaluation as a basis for their further planning," says Kevin Lea, Senior Vice President Product Management at ALLPLAN.

Maximillian Alopaeus, structural engineer and Mika Konttila, BIM specialist at the Finnish engineering firm IdeaStructura, underline the value of the new application: "With the direct integration of Scalypso in Allplan, we always have all the information from the construction site available during the design process. This saves us time, increases design quality and prevents errors".

"We offer our customers the opportunity to quickly and effectively create as-built documents for a high degree of planning security within the scope of digitization by using 3D laser scan data with Scalypso and Allplan. Thanks to the even closer technical exchange with Allplan in the future, we can react very quickly to the requirements of users in the further development of our Scalypso software and look forward to working with ALLPLAN," says Dr. Ralf König from engineering office Dr. König.

Point cloud processing in Allplan

With the converter included in the plug-in, scan data in different formats can be imported, both from the manufacturer-neutral format ASTM E57 and from the manufacturer-specific formats of Faro, Leica, Riegl, Topcon, Trimble and Zoller+Fröhlich, as well as from ASCII formats. With the new Allplan plug-in, selected 3D points can be transferred to an Allplan project.

For more intensive use, Allplan users can purchase an extended version tailored precisely to their needs at a special price. This makes it possible, for example, to automatically calculate horizontal sections from which precise floor plans or building models can be created in a time-saving manner. In addition, the full version of Scalypso is also available, which can be used to identify round shafts and pipes and automatically create rooms.