A 3D scan gives a design team something the drawings on file rarely provide anymore: a verified record of what is actually built, not what was originally intended. Renovation, addition, and adaptive reuse work goes faster and carries less risk when it starts from measured geometry rather than a set of drawings that stopped matching the building after the second or third unrecorded change.
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The problem: designing against drawings that lie
Every existing-building project inherits a set of drawings, and every set of drawings is wrong somewhere. Column lines shift half an inch, a wall gets relocated during a tenant fit-out and never gets redrawn, a mechanical room grows a piece of equipment nobody documented. None of that is anyone's fault — it is just what happens to a building over decades of small, undocumented changes — but it becomes the design team's problem the moment a detail gets drawn against a dimension that turns out to be fiction.
The usual fix is a field-verification allowance: send someone out with a tape and a laser distance meter, spot-check the dimensions that matter most, and hope nothing outside that spot-check turns into an RFI during construction. It works until it doesn't, and when it doesn't, the discovery happens at the worst possible time — after bid, after permit, sometimes after demolition has already opened up the thing the drawings got wrong.
A scan replaces that gamble with a complete measured record, captured once, that the whole design team works from instead of a sample.
What gets captured and at what level of detail
Design teams rarely need the same density everywhere. The capture plan matches setup density to what the phase in front of you actually requires, from a fast existing-conditions base plan to a fully modeled interior a contractor will build from.
Envelope and structure
Exterior walls, window and door openings, floor-to-floor heights, and the structural grid, tied to a control network so every sheet in the set shares one coordinate system.
Interior partitions, finishes, and openings
Room geometry, door and window positions, stair and ramp dimensions, and the accessibility clearances a renovation has to hold to, recorded as built rather than as drawn.
Above-ceiling and behind-chase conditions
Visible ductwork, piping, cable tray, and structure in a plenum or a chase, useful for knowing what a new wall or bulkhead will run into — recorded as existing-conditions geometry, not as a coordinated systems model.
Ornament and historic fabric
Cornices, mouldings, window profiles, and other detail a restoration has to replicate rather than idealize. Architectural scanning captures the ornament as it actually is, not as the original drawing intended it.
Site and roof
Drone mapping and roof photogrammetry add grading, hardscape, and roof geometry to the same package where a project needs the building's context, not just its interior.
What you receive
Most projects need one deliverable to design against and one to keep as the record behind it. Which combination makes sense depends on the phase you are in.
Point cloud (E57, RCP)
The registered measured record itself — the thing every drawing and model gets checked back against, for the life of the project and beyond.
2D existing-conditions CAD set
Measurable plans, sections, and elevations cut directly from the cloud, sized for a fast design start or a permit set that only needs to show what is there.
Revit or IFC model
Modeled architecture and, where scoped, structure and visible services, built to a documented matrix of what gets modeled where — typically LOD 200 to 300, agreed with your team before modeling starts rather than assumed.
Registration and QA report
The control network, the registration residuals, and a coverage note stating what was and was not visible, so the design team knows what the data can be trusted to say.
What architects and A/E teams ask us
01What LOD do you model to?
Most architectural scan-to-BIM work lands at LOD 200 to 300, but the honest answer is that it depends on which systems you need modeled, in which areas, and down to what size threshold — that becomes a documented modeling matrix agreed with your team before we start, rather than a number we quote blind.
02Can you capture an occupied or historic building?
Yes. Occupied buildings get scheduled around your tenants or your operating hours the same way any site visit would be, and historic fabric gets captured as it actually is rather than as a repeating pattern, which matters the moment a restoration crew starts fabricating replacement pieces from the model.
03How does the scan reconcile with drawings we already have?
Old drawings are still worth sending ahead of the capture. They tell us what the building was supposed to be, which speeds up recognizing what changed and where to put extra setups. After the visit, the point cloud becomes the record your team designs from and the old drawings become background history.
04Do we get a model, or just measured drawings?
Whichever the phase in front of you needs. A fast existing-conditions base plan is usually a 2D CAD deliverable; coordinated design and construction documents usually want a Revit or IFC model. Many projects start with the drawings and add the model once the scope is defined enough to justify it.
Your next decision
Make the invisible measurable.
Tell us what is inside, outside, and on the line. We will help you scope the capture and the handoff — in New York, New Jersey, or Connecticut.