Scanning Villa Park
Lucy Hamilton, KOREC Group
BB Surveys was recently commissioned by Foxton Construction to carry out a laser scanning project at Aston Villa FC and in particular to update information on the Holte End to assist in the planning and design of new seating proposals, the job required both internal and external scans with a deliverable of 2D elevations, 2D floor plans and 3D Revit model. This then expanded to include a scan of the externals of the entire stadium as well as full internals of three of the four stands and the entire bowl seating areas.
Further deliverables included 12 external elevations across all four stands, four pitch-side elevations, a full seating plan of all 42,000-plus seats, 16 floor plans, a 3D model of the Holte Stand, internals and externals, and multiple sections through the stadium’s hospitality suites.
Seating plan.
Combining scanning data and multiple sensors
A range of survey methods and sensors was used to process and combine all the collected data into a single software package, in this case, the Trimble Business Centre (TBC). Onsite, this range of sensors used included:
- SX10 scanning total station: The team traversed in ground control using the SX10, carrying out some laser scans as it worked. These scans, once processed, formed the primary control for the X7 scans to be registered to.
- X7 3D laser scanner: The team supplemented its existing X7 with an additional one to handle the high volume of work. Scans were undertaken internally and externally. For a project this size, the Perspective software for in-field scanner control and registration was key. The surveyors on-site were able to split the scans into multiple registration sets on the controller. This not only kept the enormous amount of scans organised for the on-site scan team, but also these registration sets transferred over to RealWorks as groups helping to speed up the registration/refining process. Being able to rename registration sets in the Perspective software was of significant help once the data was in RealWorks.
- R12 GNSS: An R12 was used to survey the ground control and this allowed the team to accurately place the project onto the OS Grid although this was kept at a scale factor of one.
- Rotary drone: Additionally, the team captured aerial imagery of the roof which was then fixed to the ground control and the point cloud was then brought into RealWorks to be combined with the point cloud from the terrestrial scanners.
In total, the client carried out 4,647 scans with the X7, plus additional scans with the SX10, generating over 24 billion points and more than 1,000GB of data across four RealWorks projects.
Handling the data
Commissioned by Foxton Construction to carry out a laser scanning project at Aston Villa FC and in particular to update information on the Holte End to assist in the planning and design of new seating proposals, the job required both internal and external scans with a deliverable of 2D elevations, 2D floor plans and 3D Revit model.
Back at the office, the SX10 and R12 data was imported into TBC to process the traverse and then the point clouds were exported into RealWorks.
All data from the X7 was imported directly into RealWorks before being exported for drawing/modelling.
RealWorks was used to process and combine all the laser scans. Once in the software, the data was split down into four separate projects, one for the externals and pitch side scans, and another for the internals of each of the three stands scanned.
This helped keep the file sizes smaller and consequently, more manageable.
RealWorks has the ability to export the registration to the RAW scan files.
This allowed the individual scans to be brought into multiple projects to ensure continuity between projects without needing to export point clouds or re-register scans.
Looking at multiple projects at the same time helped to monitor the quality of the registration between projects throughout the processing of the data, without needing to combine all the scans into a single project.
Lucy Hamilton, KOREC Group