High Definition Scanning to aid city's builders, designers.

Volmer Associates recently became the first New York City firm to introduce a new technology called High Definition Scanning (HDS), which uses a laser scanner to reproduce exactly what it sees in three dimensions. The result appears to be a digital photograph but is actually a reproduction of hundreds of thousands of data points packed closely together.

The new technology offers significant possibilities for the real estate market as well as structural engineers, architects, facade restoration firms and others who produce as-built drawings. Using HDS, a freestanding office building can be scanned, and the image will capture every feature of the facade as well as the adjacent landscape and street areas. Because the image is three-dimensional, it can be manipulated and rotated a full 360 degrees. The scanners are also ideal for bridges. An entire bridge can be scanned from various vantage points detailing the piers, bearings, stringers and vertical clearances.

There are many benefits provided by this technology. Entire streetscapes can be reproduced. All of the buildings, sidewalks, curbs, trees, street furniture, lane striping can be captured. Elevations and cross-sections of the area can be viewed or imported into CAD software to produce topographic maps. Window elevations and decorative detail are all captured and viewable. As-Built drawings for many older buildings no longer exist. With this technology complete as-built drawings can be re-created.

Scanning the interior of the building and incorporating those images with the exterior, allows an owner, tenant, or broker to walk through the front door and proceed floor by floor, getting a guided tour of the entire building in precise detail. The scanned reproduction is dimensionally perfect, giving exact room dimensions as well as the locations of all features within a fraction of an inch.

HDS will be an important tool for building renovation, restoration, and historic preservation, since many older buildings have inadequate as-built drawings. It also will allow building inspectors to perform a visual inspection in a fraction of the time it would ordinarily take, and with greater detail.

Vollmer Associates, consistently ranked among the nation's top design firms, provides engineering, architecture and planning, landscape architecture and survey services from 23 offices throughout the northeast. A multidisciplinary staff of over 650 performs assignments for both public and private clients ranging from property surveys and site designs for commercial developments, parks and municipal facilities to engineering design and construction supervision for complex highway projects. Vollmer Associates' highly qualified staff of in-house engineers, planners and architects provides comprehensive services to today's multifaceted projects.