What do you do when you have to install high-end ceilings in an “irregular” opening and your fabrication tolerance is only 1/8”? Recently I received a call from one of our clients and asked if we can as-built a few dozen ceiling openings to an 1/8” level of accuracy. This ceiling design has the tile edges apparent which means they need to be installed on top on the ceiling grid. Hence, the room for error is minimal. For the final product to look perfect, the perimeter ceiling tiles need to follow the shape of the opening as close as possible.
Typical pocket openings.
The pocket openings that are hosting the ceilings are framed and finished in drywall. Sheetrock installers can frame and finish incredible shapes with this material. However, maintaining a perfect radius over distance greater than 120 FT can be quite challenging. What could be even more challenging is using traditional surveying methods to validate that what was designed was also built. We quickly realized that we needed a different method to as-built the pocket openings. So, we decided to use a high-speed terrestrial laser scanner to capture the 3D environment and then generate the as-built information in the office. This solution allowed us to accurately capture and as-built tens of openings in less than 48 hours. Using the right combination of tools, the workflow used to generate the final deliverable was quite simple.
A generic ceiling family was used to represent the ceiling opening in Revit
Workflow:
Capture. We used a combination for Faro S70 and Leica RTC360.
Register. Leica Cyclone was used to register the scans together.
Extract geometry in Revit. We selected Revit as the main authoring tool because we were able quickly extract the geometry, while it offered us the ability use section views to perform a thorough QC along the edges of the ceilings.
Export to AutoCAD. The CAD format was directly imported into the CNC software for further refinement.
Benefits:
Fast turnaround. 48 hours or less depending on the number of pocket openings captured.
Nothing is missed. Due to the high-speed and high-resolution of the laser scanners any geometrical anomaly will be captured. This allowed us to identify possible installation issue early and have them resolved before the fabricated product was delivered to the job-site.
High-accuracy. The laser scanners used have a 3D position accuracy of 1/16” or less, which makes them ideal in this type of application.