Laser Scanning of the Courtyard

One of the many pleasures of being allowed on to the Mingary Castle building site while work is going on is that I meet up with so many people, from all sorts of backgrounds, who are coming together to make a great job of this restoration process.  David Crawford (above) and David McCreadie have been here before but I missed them.  Their company, IIC Technologies of Harrogate, specialise in 3D modelling of buildings like Mingary.

David McCreadie showed me the Faro laser scanner they use to create a cloud of co-ordinates of points on the walls of the building.  Onto this they then merge high quality stereo photographs.  This enables them to create a virtual, 3D model which will be an exact replica, and preserve the texture of the building in its present, stripped-down state.  As far as the layman is concerned, this will enable us to 'walk in' to this wonderful building, knowing that everything we see is so accurate that exact measurements of features can be made; and what they are doing will be a highly realistic and accurate legacy for future historians.

I was intrigued by the white balls they had festooned all around the courtyard.  These give the laser scanner common points which are used when the scanner is moved to different parts of the courtyard to enable the whole interior to be done.

The two Davids are back because they weren't satisfied with the quality of the first survey they did - the outside of the building was fine, but they needed to re-do the interior.  It's a reflection on the project's attention to detail.

As if seeing these two highly skilled professionals at work wasn't enough, it was good to go outside again and see the pride the scaffolders take in everything they do.  Picture shows John Forsyth sweeping the entrance to his scaffolding world - more about where that has got to in the next post.

Many thanks to David Crawford and David McCreadie for their patience in describing what they were doing.