Results

Arup began using Cintoo Cloud in November 2019 to host and manage their data and has since uploaded over six thousand scans to the platform. The company has dozens of registered users across its teams in Australasia, the UK and the US, while the data is shared far more widely with clients, external architects, subcontractors and BIM Managers and, as such, usage of the platform has been growing exponentially.

One of the major benefits of the platform is the ability for team members to view their project data virtually, without needing to do a site visit. Being able to look around their build, take measurements and gain a true understanding of what’s there has provided significant time and cost savings for the business.

“Cintoo Cloud has become a key part of our Reality Capture workflows. I’m able to share project data with both internal and external team members and people are interacting with the data all the time. It’s really easy to add someone in and it only takes about 10 minutes to show them how to use it and they’re off,” says Michael Alder, Regional Reality Capture Leader.

“One of the biggest benefits is that it enables us to get our clients more involved in the process. By giving them access to this information, they can walk through the building and immediately understand the scope of the project and what’s being done. This transparency and collaboration increase the value of what we’re doing across all disciplines.”

So great is the benefit of being able to share their project data with clients that they include it in their proposals.

Teams are also using Cintoo Cloud to compare their as-builts to their models. They upload BIM models in IFC format overlaying the scans to quickly find differences between the scanned built environment and the design intent found in the model. Any issues can be tracked up and shared with the relevant team members.

Further functionality well-used by the team is the meshing tool for cropping and exporting meshes. This has also opened up future workflows with other tools they’ve developed like pedestrian modelling and 3D Inspection software. By quickly capturing a space, and turning it into a virtual building or environment, the engineering and analysis possibilities are more easily tested.

For big projects, they use even more of Cintoo Cloud’s functionality, uploading the model into the platform along with all of the scans, level by level. They then use the model verification tool to do visual checks to help everyone understand the condition of the model compared to the scans. They can also add IFCs of proposed models in context to the scan.

“Cintoo Cloud has exceeded what we originally wanted it to do – that is, just providing easy access to view big scan data. I’m using it daily and I get value out of it every day. It has become a vital part of our point cloud management. I no longer have portable hard drives sitting around, which used to be the only way we could share our point cloud data. Now, all our scans are uploaded and anyone who wants to can download them”.

“The platform is helping us remove risk from our projects as well as become more efficient. It’s a real time saver. Overall, it’s good practice to use Cintoo Cloud in our workflows.”

Going forward

There is further functionality within the platform that Arup intends to explore over the coming months, like using BIM construction models for clash detection work and exporting issues to BIM collaboration software.

Furthermore, with their infrastructure work, they’re coming across more and more workflows that use unstructured scanning, so they’ll be keen to upload unstructured data alongside their structured data using Cintoo as their multi-modal platform.