Proposed Methodology for Generation of Building Information Model with Laserscanning

For refurbishment and state review of an existing old building, a new model reflecting the current state is often required especially when the original plans are no longer accessible. Laser scanners are used more and more as surveying instruments for various applications because of their high-precision scanning abilities. For buildings, the most notable and widely accepted product data model is the IFC product data model. It is designed to cover the whole lifecycle and supported by various software vendors and enables applications to efficiently share and exchange project information. The models obtained with the laser scanner, normally sets of points ("point cloud"), have to be transferred to an IFC compatible building information model to serve the needs of different planning states. This paper presents an approach designed by the German Research Center in Karlsruhe (Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe) to create an IFC compatible building information model from laser range images. The methodology through the entire process from data acquisition to the IFC compatible product model was proposed in this paper. In addition, IFC-Models with different level of detail (LoDs) were introduced and discussed within the work.