What if you could layout against reality?

I've just returned from the Capturing Reality Forum in Salzburg (the newly combined SPAR Europe and European LIDAR Mapping Forum) where myself and Andy Evans from Topcon presented a live workflow showing point clouds and design data together within BIM 360 Layout, a proof of concept workflow where we posed the question 'What if you could layout from reality?'.

We had many interesting discussions after the presentation with people thinking of possible uses. My favourite was the idea of MEP layout based on a scan from earlier that day, you can run clashes against the point cloud to identify issues before going to site using Navisworks, then use the current information to help visualise and layout your work.

With three scans we were able to quickly register them, export to a TXT format with RGB data, import in Navisworks, add control and layout points using Point Layout then upload to BIM 360 Glue for use in BIM 360 Layout.

You can also then use the measurement tools to identify distances between the design and the point cloud out on site.

Andy Evans and Autodesk's Michael Moran will be demonstrating this workflow at Autodesk University next week https://events.au.autodesk.com/connect/sessionDetail.ww?SESSION_ID=10127&tclass=popup