Why Should I Use Point Cloud Technology for My Project?
In 2005, the inner face of one of the twelve gates of a 500-year-old fort in Punjab came down, and there was no measured record to restore it from. When we surveyed the fort, a surveyor walked it with a helmet-mounted 360° camera while a drone covered the heights, and the captures fused into one point cloud, the first measured record of the site that has ever existed. Nothing touched the masonry, and the fort stayed open the whole time.
What a point cloud is
A point cloud is a measured 3D record of a site, captured as a dense set of points. Where a photo shows you what something looks like, a point cloud tells you how big it is, where it sits and how far it is from where it should be.
What it lets you check
Our BIM deviation detection lays the BIM model over the point cloud and shows exactly where what was built differs from what was designed. On earthworks, the point cloud gives you the volume dug against the target and checks the slope at each location to show where it is safe to build. None of that is possible from photos alone, which is why 360° walks and point clouds do different jobs.
A record of everything before it’s covered
On a public-works site in Hong Kong, fixed LiDAR ScanStations have produced a full point cloud of their zones every 15–30 minutes since June 2024, with nobody on site to trigger them. Each scan is checked against the as-designed BIM model, so pours, lifts and backfills are on the record even after they’re buried.
No workstation required
In SpatialSense, multi-gigabyte scans stream in the browser with no download, files from any scan vendor can be uploaded, and each scan sits beside the 360° walks of the same area. If you already have a scan, our free Lite Viewer opens LAS, LAZ and IFC files in the browser with no login.
Open your own scan in seconds
Drop a LAS, LAZ or IFC file into our free Lite Viewer with no login, or book a 30-minute demo and we’ll show you point clouds from live projects.