Collaboration corner: Digitalisation of assets

In another episode of Rhys Lewis’s ‘collaboration corner’, Nationwide Drones and Revizto join forces to help clients explore the digitalisation of existing and historical assets.

Rhys Lewis, director at Revizto and Mike Edwards, director of Nationwide Drones conducted this collaborative piece of work as a proof of concept for digitalising assets for a mutual client.

The collaboration corner has evolved during this lockdown period as a digital space for creativity and innovation. For this exercise, we wanted to help clients explore the possibilities around the digitalisation of existing and historical assets.

We really wanted to showcase that this is actually much easier and cheaper than many clients realise. With the right technology and team, you can start to create a digital representation of any asset large or small, vertical or linear.

Mike attended Rhys’ property with his equipment and flew an autonomous flight using a 500g drone. This was completed in just 30 minutes as part of this testing exercise.

If this was for a client the process would be much more detailed.

Once processed the files were shared and Rhys received three formats. A .las point cloud and two mesh formats .obj and .fbx. Revizto supports all of these formats so it was a simple import of the point cloud. Once in Revizto, this was then federated along with the Revit model Rhys has for his home as well as a number of technical PDF drawings.

Image A demonstrates Revizto 2D/3D overlay tool which is incredibly powerful. Here we are overlaying a section drawing from Revizto on top of the point cloud. This acts as ‘Bridge-to-BIM’ for a lot of clients who prefer to review information in 2D. Using Revizto’s gaming engine we can start to look at this federated data on my iPad using my two thumbs and for a wide variety of purposes.

In the video, Rhys conducted a site survey using Revizto on his iPad, which contained a 3D model, drawings, the point cloud and also a Ricoh Theta 360 camera. Using the automated STAMP tool in Revizto meant he could place these tasks on any of the drawings or the model data.

Image A.

The video focuses on As Built verification to check if what has been built is accurate. The verification is done by placing the stamp at the relevant location in Revizto and then taking a picture using an iPad or the 360 camera. We’re also able to set and track PPM (Planned Preventative Maintenance) tasks as you’ll see and also a wide variety of other activities related to the assets which we now have digitalised in Revizto.

‘Embrace the power of digital technology’

Rhys Lewis said: “What really stood out for me on this exercise was how quick and easy it was to create this digital version of my home!

“Now I have this data in Revizto it’s really opened up my mind to the possibilities now of being able to use this data moving forwards.

“One interesting use case was I’m now able to measure the front of the garden where I need some new fencing, with 3 clicks I know exactly how much I need!”

This is a huge opportunity for any client looking to embrace the power of digital technology. It doesn’t have to be challenging or costly to embrace the power of technology and use it to your advantage! If you think this could be a worthwhile exercise for your organisation then please do get in touch.

“As we start uploading more #realitycapture data to Revizto the potential use cases in management of existing assets are becoming increasingly apparent! Scan2BIM can be a gradual process, when the initial dataset provides the ideal reference model to begin digital FM.

“The next step will be to integrate the internal reality capture,” says Mike Edwards.

Original article.