3D Laser Scanning in Vancouver

A LiDAR scanner measures millions of points across a space, each one a real distance to a real surface. Instead of a handful of dimensions written on a sketch, you end up with a complete geometric record of the room, including the parts nobody thought to measure at the time.

That matters most for the questions you did not know to ask on site. When the ceiling height turns out to matter three weeks into design, or a column is not where the old drawing put it, the answer is already in the data. Nobody has to drive back out.

It also removes the compounding error problem. Hand measurement accumulates: every dimension is taken from the last one, and small mistakes stack up across a long run of wall. A scan measures everything from the same reference, so a 40-metre warehouse is as accurate at the far end as it is at the door.

We scan with an iGUIDE PLANIX, a survey-grade system that pairs integrated LiDAR with a 60MP 360° camera. Because the imagery and the measurements are captured together and registered to each other, the resulting model is both dimensionally accurate and visually complete.

The practical consequence is that you get a measured dataset and a photographic record of the building from the same visit, rather than commissioning a scan and a photographer separately and hoping the two line up.

Accuracy figures for laser scanners are easy to compare badly, so it is worth being exact about ours. iGUIDE publishes the PLANIX as typically ±10mm from camera to wall, on walls 60cm or longer. It publishes a separate, looser figure of ±25mm for the raw point cloud out to the scanner's 40-metre range. The first describes a measured wall; the second describes every individual point the scanner records.

Range is the reason a building is scanned from many positions rather than one. A reading taken from a couple of metres away is tighter than one taken from across a deep warehouse bay, so the scanner is moved through the building and each position overlaps the last. Glass, mirrors, polished floors and strong sunlight all affect laser measurement, and setups are planned around them.

A tolerance describes the measurement, not the drawing. Somebody still drafts the plan from the captured data and decides, wall by wall, how to represent what was measured. That drafting step is where two firms using similar instruments end up handing over drawings of different quality.

A tripod LiDAR scanner suits most as-built work: the drawing an architect or designer works over, a lease-area calculation, a permit set's existing conditions. It is not the answer to everything, and saying so is more useful than pretending otherwise.

Work where a few millimetres decides whether something fits, such as precision fabrication or tight equipment clearances, needs a survey-grade terrestrial scanner working to ±1–3mm. At the other end, if the only job is to show a space to someone deciding whether to visit it, a tour camera or a careful hand sketch is usually enough. The tolerance a drawing needs is set by what will be built from it, and your design team sets that figure.

We cover Metro Vancouver and the Fraser Valley from our North Shore base, including Vancouver, Burnaby, Richmond, Surrey, Delta, Langley, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, New Westminster, North and West Vancouver, Maple Ridge, Mission, Abbotsford and Chilliwack.

Much of the industrial work sits in the Burnaby, Richmond, Surrey, Delta and Langley corridor, where large-floorplate warehouse and flex buildings are exactly the case that hand measurement handles worst.