The orthodox Church of St Peter and St Paul is located in the Czech spa city of Karlovy Vary; formerly known as Karlsbad or Carlsbad. Constructed in the last decade of the 19th century in a Neo-russian style, the outside is finished with rich decoration and a central tower and is surrounded by four smaller towers, all with onion shaped gilded domes. The church is full of intricately rendered icons and complex decorations including a relief featuring a rendering of Tsar Peter the Great.
“Because this church is so intricate 3D laser scanning was our only option – we could never capture the same levels of detail without it,” continued Blazek. “The laser scanner can measure tens of thousands of points per second which records unparalleled levels of detail. However, its speed and accuracy presents us with new challenges when processing the massive volumes of measurements. That’s where the Pointools software came in.”
The BWPS team completed 140 scans from different locations both inside and outside the church and the rectory. 41 scans measured the exterior of the church – including several from the roofs of surrounding buildings. 51 scans measured the church interior including the nave, sanctuary, and educational facilities. And a further 48 scans measured the inside and outside of the rectory. All of the laser scans were combined and exported to Pointools where they were unified to produce a point cloud with 500 million points. Using the Pointools Plug-in for Rhino, BWPS was then able to create their many required deliverables.
“Using Pointools we can work with huge point clouds without loss of software performance or data quality, we can work in a number of CAD environments, and we can create high resolution orthographic point cloud images and high quality videos for presentation purposes,” continued Blazek. “That is why Pointools has become an integral and essential part of our scan data processing workflow.”
