The Global Archicad Community

[Karol Argasinski]

Karol,

I have a question I would like to have your input on.
What are your experiences with the Archicad Add-On of PointCAB? I have been doing some modeling based on Point Clouds for a German company in the last few months, and when I asked them about it, they said that the PointCAB Add-On is not very useful in Archicad, it does not create elements accurately enough, or something like that, so they are not using it.

Could you share your experiences with this Add-On?

Laszlo,
Sure thing. First of all, my office (BIMfaktoria) works with pointcloud daily. We use PointCab as well add-on (Points4BIMm) on daily matter.
On the screenshot you can see wooden structure for heritage building. Scan with one of our FARO unit took 2 hours (color) and making model of it took approx. 4 hours with PointCab and add-on. Can't imagine how long it would take to create all those columns and beams without it (keep in mind that this is as-is state, so all slanted elements are actually slanted as they are in reality).
You can use those tools not only for beams and colums of course, it can be used with any building elements in ARCHICAD. I wouldn't say it is not very useful, I would rather say that's another level of using pointclouds in ARCHICAD/BIM

Best regards,
Karol

[LaszloNagy]

Karol,

Thanks for your feedback. So the Add-On is useful. Maybe those guys just have not figured out yet how to utilize it the right way.

[Steve Jepson]

What do you point cloud users think about PointFuse?
I assume that a program like this is essential if you are transforming point clouds into a Building Information Model. https://pointfuse.com/

I am thinking the Leica BLK2GO with PointFuse would be a good system for Scan to BIM process.
Not sure how well the 3d files will import into ArchiCAD. I tried to import a slab from PointFuse but the point cloud sees too crude to be of much use. It was from a FARO S .ef7 file. That file looks a lot better in PointFuse than it does in Recap.
However, I don't expect to find anything better than the PointCab software for working with ArchiCAD. https://bimm-gmbh.de/download/

Does the PoitCab add-on for ArchiCAD need to run in ArchiCAD 23 ? or is there an add-on for ArchiCAD 24 ?

[Steve Jepson]

Are there any other programs like PointCab that do not require that the point could be imported into the BIM software?