Revision of Automation Methods for Scan to BIM

Abstract

Nowadays in the BIM (Building Information Modelling) world there are several functions that are not fully developed. It is well known that, during the last years, BIM methodology, is being implemented more and more around the world and we are witnessing the benefits that can provide. Despite having plenty of benefits for engineering, there is a problem that it has not been solved yet: the correct extraction and/or recognition of the physical space represented by a point cloud, to create an accurate BIM model, which is better known as Scan to BIM. Scan to BIM, is a handwork methodology where the user tries to convert a point cloud, which can be obtained using different reality capture devices, into a 3D model by means of a BIM software. The problem is that the process is almost entirely manual, so taking into consideration the significant amount of time spent to represent complicated geometries, Scan to BIM can become a very hard work and time-consuming work. We will show in this paper some methods that are currently available to automate the process of Scan to BIM, which allows to partially reduce the manual work of the person responsible of this task. Additionally, this will make it possible to obtain a much more complete product than if it had been made without any automation, as well as to reduce consumed time to make the model.