Historic Fishtown

Along the Lake Michigan shore of Leland, Michigan lays historic Fishtown made up of numerous weathered fishing shanties, smokehouses, souvenir shops, restaurants, and more. Nearly half of the "town" rests on stilts and a boardwalk, along with its docks standing at the edge of the Leland River. Once the heart of a commercial fishing village, the structures and docks are real places where people can walk through, see, and feel a connection to the areas' great fishing heritage. The aura is incredibly unique and is something the local citizens are determined to preserve.

Working with Hopkins Burns Design Studio, JJR, and the Fishtown Preservation Society, Midwestern Consulting provided HDS service to document the locations of the entire Fishtown for future maintenance and preservation purposes.

Many of the buildings were originally planned with great haste. Rarely do buildings lie perpendicular, plumb, or parallel to one another. This presented the architects with a nearly impossible task of measuring and locating the buildings in their exact, existing conditions.

Midwestern Consulting provided our client with an accurate 3D wireframe of all the buildings from which the architects performed massing studies. Often performed by architects, massing studies explore present and future spatial relationships. For instance, Hopkins Burns found that one of shops was originally facing south, but now faced east. If the building is rotated back to its original position, a massing study will reveal the spatial impact.

As the project developed, the 3D wireframes were imported into Google Sketchup to generate 3D solid masses and the photo images were overlaid that will put Fishtown into Google Earth. In addition, a topographic survey of the entire area was also needed. This was easily created directly from our 50-million point 3D data point cloud. No total station needed.

Laser Scanning, BIM & Revit

3D Building Information Modeling systems (BIM) are quickly becoming the productive tool many of us in the construction industry thought they would be. In a building renovation project, BIM allows the design team, the construction team, and the building owner to add-to and reference all information acquired during the development of the BIM model - including existing conditions measurements.

How does point cloud data collected by the 3D laser scanner fit with BIM systems?

Once 3D scanning is completed and the data has been post-processed, the 3D data can be imported into Civil 3D CAD, Revit or NavisWorks. This data import process allows you to manage existing conditions data in these systems.

This can be much easier and more efficient than doing hand-measurements yourself. Here are a few of the reasons:

• The laser scanner captures all of the existing conditions measurements - not just those objects you spend time measuring.
• If you need to re-check a measurement all of that point data is available to you eliminating the need to go back out to the site.
• In your CAD program you can create precise 2D or 3D drawings at anytime you want.

Accuracy Counts

Midwestern Consulting completed a very interesting project where accuracy of our laser scanner helped identify a structural deficiency.

Our task was to scan a large, multi-story facility and create a registered point cloud from which 2D drawings were rendered. During the process, an exterior wall was identified to have a greater than 3" curvature. The drawings were then compared to the as-builts to verify the discrepancy. The problem was identified as rust-jacking. A traditional architectural measurement or survey may not have uncovered this issue.

As a project manager, you may have run into similar situations where you need more accurate information. Midwestern's laser scanning service will do that for you.

Accuracy counts!

2D and 3D Drawings

To compliment our 2D and 3D drawings, Midwestern Consulting now has another deliverable for you. And it's free!

Leica's new software allows you to view your building's existing conditions from your own desktop.

Using the free Leica TruView "panoramic" point cloud viewer you can view, zoom in, or pan over point clouds naturally and intuitively.

Using a simple panoramic approach, you see 3D point clouds on the computer screen just as if you were standing right where the laser scanner captured the scan data.

Easy 3D Measuring and Markups at Your Desk!

In TruView, users can extract real 3D coordinates and accurately measure distances. Results appear right on the point cloud image.

Markups are also easy to create, save, print, email, and share with your peers, contractors, CMs, or with clients for more effective communications. Simple controls let you rotate the view just as if you were turning, raising, or lowering your head.

Below is a sample TruView point cloud with some markups.