Laser Scanning a Steel Fabrication Plant for Roof and Facade Renovation

Published 5 October 2026

A FARO Focus laser scanner on a tripod inside an operating steel fabrication plant, with structural roof trusses and an overhead crane rail visible

Laser scanning this 12,000 m² steel fabrication plant for renovation took 228 individual scan setups, registered together from inside and outside the building, across areas too hot, too congested with machinery, or too restricted to cover in a single continuous pass. The capture fed two separate deliverables: a structural model of the steel roof trusses, and a facade model to support the renovation's fabrication drawings.

FARO scanner set up inside the steel fabrication plant, with a press brake, stacked steel plate, and the roof truss structure overhead — One of the plant's working bays — steel plate stock and active machinery on the floor, roof trusses the scan needed to resolve overhead.

Why 228 scans instead of a handful of wide sweeps

A plant this size would normally need far fewer scanner setups if it were one open, empty volume. This one wasn't: active cutting and press equipment blocked line of sight between bays, some zones ran hot enough to limit how long the scanner could stay in position, and a few sections were access-restricted while work continued around them. Each of those constraints meant moving the scanner more often and covering less area per setup — 228 individual scans was the number that actually got full coverage, not a target picked in advance.

Scan resolution and quality settings for a hot, congested interior

With this many setups needed, scan time per station mattered as much as raw detail. Most of the interior was captured at 1/2 resolution (point spacing) with a 2x quality setting (FARO's noise-reduction exposure averaging) — enough density to resolve individual roof members, purlins, and connection plates, at a scan time per station that made 228 setups achievable in the time available. A handful of areas needing finer connection-plate detail were rescanned at higher resolution specifically for that purpose.

Why not just scan everything at maximum resolution and quality?

Scan time scales with both settings — at 228 stations, doubling per-station time would have meant a materially longer site programme for detail the roof-structure model didn't need everywhere.
1/2 resolution with 2x quality resolves individual structural members and connections cleanly; it's the facade's fine panel-joint detail and specific connection points that get a higher-resolution pass, not the whole building.
The underlying ranging accuracy doesn't change between settings — resolution and quality control point density and noise, not the scanner's distance-measurement precision.

FARO scanner positioned near a bay door inside the plant, with an overhead 15-ton crane and steel stock visible — A second working bay, scanned near the crane rail — the 15-ton overhead crane and stacked steel stock both had to register cleanly into the same model as the roof structure above them.

Merging interior and exterior captures into one registered model

The roof structure and the facade aren't independent deliverables from independent scans — they're two outputs of one registered point cloud that crosses the building's envelope. Exterior scans around the facade were tied into the same control network as the interior bays, so the structural roof model and the facade model share a single coordinate system rather than needing to be manually aligned against each other afterward.

FARO scanner capturing the steel fabrication plant's corrugated metal exterior facade ahead of renovation — The exterior facade pass — corrugated metal cladding due for renovation, captured into the same registered model as the interior structure.

What the renovation team actually needed: two deliverables from one capture

The roof trusses were delivered as a structural model at coordination-to-fabrication grade (LOD 300–400, depending on the member), accurate enough to check against new retrofit or reinforcement design. The facade went into a 3D model for the cladding renovation's own fabrication drawings — the same one-capture, multiple-deliverable approach used across this site's Scan to BIM and Scan to Model work, just applied to a single plant with two distinct renovation scopes at once.

Scan to BIM →Facade Survey →Registration glossary entry →

Questions about this article

Can a working steel fabrication plant be scanned without stopping production?

Yes — this plant stayed operational throughout. Scanning was scheduled around active machinery and restricted zones rather than requiring a shutdown.

Does scanning at 1/2 resolution instead of full resolution reduce accuracy?

No — resolution and quality settings control point density and noise reduction, not the scanner's underlying ranging accuracy. They're chosen to balance detail against scan time across however many setups a site needs.

Why did this plant need both a roof structural model and a facade model?

Two separate renovation scopes were running at once — structural work on the roof trusses and a cladding renovation on the facade — and both needed a 3D model to design and fabricate against.

How do you decide how many scan setups a site like this needs?

By coverage, not a target number — every zone has to be visible from at least one scan position with enough overlap to register cleanly. Active machinery, heat, and access restrictions here meant more, smaller setups than an equivalent empty building would need.

What LOD does a steel roof structure model like this get delivered at?

LOD 300 to 400 depending on the member and what the renovation design needs to check against it — see the Scan to BIM page's tier table for what each LOD level actually includes.

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