Technology
Photograph of
scanned image
The all-glass elevator shaft nears completion, above, as The Carvist Corp.
team installs the large glass panels on the steel structure.
four places around the structure. ;e
camera scans the structure, painting it
with little dots of light and storing those
dots of light dimensionally correct rela-
tive to each other. We are able to take
that information and, using AutoCAD,
accurately model the structure. [For
the Santa Monica project], we were
then actually able to tell where the
bows and the twists were in the steel.
;at allowed us to build a perfectly
rectangular glass structure around it
and determine where the glass brackets
had to be at each load-bearing point.”
Point Supported and Stainless Steel Hardware Systems For Glass
Architectural Glass Systems
Linox Technology by
For the Santa Monica project, the steel
structure was scanned using the Leica
ScanStation 2. Engineers applied the scan
data in 3D CAD and designed the glass
panels around the scan data; then they
extracted the panels for the CAM process.
As a result, every panel was a perfect fit
and provided for speedy installation.
Describing life before the Leica
technology, Project Manager Tim Egan
says: “Most of our projects required
confirmed field measurements, often
holding up projects until such data
became available. And while approved
building plans are great as a map, they
do little to provide exact measurements.
… I cannot foresee going back to the
old way of handwritten field measurements. With accuracy of 1/10th of an
inch at 900 feet, we simply go to our
scan data for such information … it’s
very accurate.” In the case of the Santa
Monica Place mall, “One mistake due to
one poor field dimension could have cost
us tens of thousands of dollars as there
would have been a compounding e;ect
o;setting adjacent panels,” Egan says.
www.wagnerlinox.com
1.888.243.6914
See us in the Innovations Pavilion at GlassBuild America, booth 745.
The author is marketing manager for The Carvist
Corp., a Placentia, Calif., glass and glazing
contractor and consulting firm that also specializes in the design and manufacture of composite
aluminum panels. Write him at carvistlw@dslex-treme.com. For more information on the Leica
ScanStation 2, visit www.leica-geosystems.com.
