Reality Capture & Renovation

Introduction

The construction and renovation sector is undergoing a profound digital transformation, driven by the emergence of reality capture and 3D modelling technologies. Point clouds, resulting from laser scanning of physical environments, have become an indispensable tool for architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) professionals.

Renovation today represents more than 50% of building activity in developed countries. Unlike new-build projects, renovation operations face unique challenges: existing documentation is often incomplete, obsolete or non-existent. Original plans for older buildings are frequently lost, and successive modifications over the years have not always been recorded rigorously.

The management and sharing of data from these captures now constitutes a strategic challenge as important as the capture itself. The proliferation of specialised cloud platforms offers professionals a range of options whose mastery has become a differentiating competence.

Context and challenges of renovation

The European and American building stock is largely composed of existing buildings whose performance, compliance and documentation need improvement. In Europe, buildings account for approximately 40% of energy consumption and 36% of greenhouse gas emissions, and nearly 75% of the stock is considered energy-inefficient. This creates sustained pressure on renovation, rehabilitation and modernisation of assets.

In the United States, the residential home improvement and repair market now exceeds 500 billion dollars per year according to projections from the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard, with an estimate of 509 billion dollars for owner-occupied spending in 2025 and a broader residential renovation market exceeding 600 billion dollars annually.

Renovation challenges are driven by converging economic, environmental and social perspectives. On the environmental front, energy retrofitting is a major lever for emissions reduction in a sector where gains cannot come solely from new construction. European directives on the energy performance of buildings, the revised EPBD which came into force on 28 May 2024, and national renovation trajectories require a progressive ramp-up of diagnostics, reliable data and performance monitoring.

On the economic front, renovation mobilises a broad value chain: building owners, architects, engineering firms, surveyors, general contractors, technical trades, facility operators and asset managers. Reality capture becomes relevant when it reduces uncertainty about the existing conditions: actual dimensions, technical constraints, pathologies, interfaces between trades, and reference data for the design, execution and operation phases.

Objectives and structure of the report

This technical-commercial report provides an in-depth analysis of reality capture technologies in the renovation sector, with particular attention to the European and American markets. It pursues several objectives:

• Raise awareness among professionals about the potential of reality capture
• Provide an in-depth analysis of the market and its dynamics
• Quantify the benefits and return on investment of these technologies
• Present an objective and comparative overview of the main data management solutions available
• Formulate concrete and actionable strategic recommendations

Chapter 1 - Reality Capture and Point Clouds

Fundamental principles

Reality capture encompasses all technologies that digitise the physical world in three dimensions. At the core of this approach is the concept of the point cloud: a collection of points in three-dimensional space, each representing an X, Y, Z coordinate and potentially additional attributes such as colour (RGB), signal intensity or surface normal.

The point cloud constitutes the most faithful possible geometric representation of physical reality. Unlike a CAD or BIM model, it relies on no interpretive assumptions: each point corresponds to an actual measurement taken on an existing surface. This objectivity makes it an unassailable reference tool in renovation projects.

Formation of a point cloud

A point cloud is formed when a laser scanner emits light beams that bounce off encountered surfaces. The scanner measures:

• The signal return time (Time-of-Flight technique): the laser beam is emitted, bounces off a surface, and the elapsed time before the signal returns enables distance calculation with very high precision.
• The phase shift between emission and reception (Phase Shift technique): better suited to short distances, this technique compares the phase of the emitted and received wave to deduce distance.

These measurements enable distance calculation and determination of the 3D coordinates of each point. Point cloud density depends on scan resolution and distance to the object. A high-end scanner can capture up to 2 million points per second, generating multi-gigabyte files for a medium-sized building.

The Scan-to-BIM process

The Scan-to-BIM workflow is today a methodological reference for renovation projects. It comprises several key steps:

• Scan planning: definition of the area to be scanned, identification of risk zones, selection of station locations to ensure sufficient overlap between scans.
• On-site acquisition: execution of scans with precise scanner positioning. Reflective targets (spheres or checkerboards) are placed in the space to facilitate assembly.
• Registration: alignment and assembly of multiple individual scans into a common reference frame, by reference to targets or by automatic alignment algorithms (ICP, Iterative Closest Point).
• Cleaning and processing: removal of measurement noise, elimination of parasitic points, density optimisation and thematic segmentation.
• BIM modelling: conversion of the point cloud into parametric BIM elements (walls, slabs, beams, technical ducts) at the required level of detail (LOD 100 to LOD 400).
• Verification and delivery: quality control, cloud/model comparison, export in contractual formats.

Static terrestrial laser scanners (TLS)

Terrestrial laser scanners represent the most precise solution for building documentation. These instruments, positioned on tripods, perform 360-degree scans with precision reaching 1 mm at 10 metres. Market leaders include the Leica RTC360/BLK360 series, FARO Focus, Trimble X7 and Riegl VZ series: instruments particularly suited to projects requiring extreme precision, such as heritage, industry and tunnels.

Mobile scanners and SLAM

SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) technology has revolutionised data capture by enabling scanning in motion. The operator moves through the building while the scanner maps the space in real time by fusing LiDAR and inertial (IMU) data.

Mobile scanners offer exceptional productivity: where a static scanner requires 5 to 10 minutes per station, a mobile scanner can cover 1,000 sqm in under 15 minutes. Solutions such as the Leica BLK2GO, NavVis VLX and Matterport Pro3 dominate this segment. Precision, slightly lower than TLS (1 to 3 cm), is more than sufficient for the vast majority of renovation applications.

Chapter 6 - Platform overview: ATIS.cloud

ATIS.cloud is a collaborative SaaS platform dedicated to importing, processing, exploiting and sharing point clouds and the associated 3D data. It is aimed at reality capture, construction and renovation professionals who need to make large data sets accessible to non-specialist teams.

Positioning

ATIS.cloud addresses a recurring problem in the market: point clouds are heavy, technical and dependent on specific software ecosystems. The platform covers the value chain that follows capture: import, convert, view, measure, annotate and share from a browser, without requiring discipline-specific software on every workstation. The publisher’s documentation states more than 19 supported formats and files of up to 1 TB; the support documentation details the formats accepted as sources and as resources. The platform replaces neither Revit, nor Cyclone, nor CloudCompare: it sits as a distribution and review layer.

Ideal profile: surveyors, scanning companies, engineering consultancies and clients who need to distribute point clouds to mixed teams without imposing discipline-specific software on every participant.