A day on site with a laser scanner.

We're in Dublin this week, scanning sites across the city. People often ask what actually happens on a scanning day, so here it is.

The morning

Before anything is switched on, we walk the site. Where does the scanner need to stand, what's in the way, what's locked, and who needs to know we're there. Ten minutes of walking saves an hour of moving a tripod.

Then control. Everything we capture has to tie together and, usually, tie to the building's own grid or a known datum. Getting that right at the start is what makes the finished point cloud usable rather than merely pretty.

Then setups. The scanner goes down, spins, and moves. A typical day is 50 to 60 setups. Each one overlaps its neighbours, because overlap is what lets the scans be registered into one cloud later.

The afternoon

We check coverage as we go, not at the end. The expensive mistake in scanning is a shadow: an area nothing could see into, found three weeks later when someone tries to model it. Modern kit shows the registration building up on screen, so gaps get caught while the tripod is still on site.

We photograph what the scanner can't tell you: labels, plant tags, service runs disappearing into a ceiling, the corner that's clearly been altered twice.

Back at the office

Registration ties the setups together into one cloud, cleans the noise, and exports in the format your team needs: LAS, RCP or E57. That work takes most of a day for a day's scanning, which is why we issue the week after the site week.

Three things that decide how it goes

1. Access. A locked plant room, a car parked against the facade, or a tenant who wasn't told we were coming.
2. Clutter. We can scan a full warehouse quickly. A packed store room takes four times as long for a tenth of the area.
3. A clear brief. "Scan the building" costs more than "we need the frame, the roof structure and the plant deck, to model new steel against".

This week and the weeks after

Dublin is booked out this week. If you missed it, we scan anywhere, any week, and the next pooled week will be posted here shortly. Tell us about your site.