Industry / Architecture and restoration

Reality capture for architecture and restoration

Documenting an occupied coastal building the old way means a lift, a swing stage, a lane closure and a week of somebody's time. We fly it, scan the parts the aircraft cannot see, and hand you a measurable model of the whole envelope.

Request a scope → See all services

01/The problem

The building is occupied and it is not going to stop being occupied.

Every restoration project on the Gulf Coast starts with the same constraint. People live there, guests are checking in, the pool deck is open, and the parking is full. Access equipment is expensive, slow, and disruptive before it has documented a single square foot.

Aerial capture removes most of that. Roof, elevations, balconies, railings and site come off a flight. Terrestrial scanning picks up undersides, garages and interiors. Both register to one control frame, and the result is a model your team measures in for the life of the project.

What you can pull from the model

Window and opening schedules with dimensions
Balcony and slab edge dimensions
Railing heights and post spacing
Facade areas by elevation for take off
Roof planes, slopes and areas
Sections and elevations exported to CAD
Thermal overlay for moisture and envelope performance
A dated existing conditions record before work starts

02/Fit

How it changes the project

Scoping without guessing

Quantities pulled from the model instead of estimated from a walk. Fewer surprises when the scaffolding goes up and the real condition appears.

Bidding on the same conditions

One capture shared with every bidder means the numbers come back comparable. Sell the model access once and let three estimators take off the same building.

Answering the month four question

When the question comes up later, you measure it in the data instead of mobilizing a lift again.

A record that predates the work

Existing conditions with a capture date, which matters in a dispute far more than anyone expects at the start of a job.

03/Proof

Data from delivered work.

Colorized LiDAR point cloud of a coastal tower and its site — Occupied tower captured from the air. No lift, no swing stage, no lane closure.

Thermal image of a facade showing window and wall temperature differences — Thermal on the same mobilization. Envelope performance visible before it becomes damage.

Aircraft in flight documenting the elevation of a coastal condominium tower — Elevations flown directly, at the resolution the scope requires.

04/Services

What we typically fly for this work.

05/Questions

Common questions.

Do residents or guests need to be moved?

No. The flight happens over the building and the scanning is quiet and passive. We coordinate on timing so it is not disruptive, but nobody has to leave.

How detailed can the facade documentation get?

Detailed enough to pull window sizes and counts, railing heights, balcony dimensions and slab edge profiles. Where the scope needs something finer than the collection resolves, we tell you before the flight rather than after.

Can you capture the underside of balconies?

Yes, with terrestrial scanning registered to the aerial data. That is exactly the case the ground based pass exists for.

Will the data work with our CAD or BIM software?

Yes. Point clouds to Recap, Revit, Civil 3D, Bentley and CloudCompare. Linework to AutoCAD or MicroStation. Mesh to OBJ where a visual model is more useful.

05/Next step

Start with one site.

Send the boundary and the deliverable you need. We scope it, fly it, and return the data in your format, typically in under seven days.

Request a scope → See the portfolio

(727) 421-5779 [email protected]