TONETS Corporation

Significant Labor-saving of 3D Data Creation through Combination of In-house-developed CAD System and InfiPoints

Shinryo Corporation

Industry

Equipment Installation

Product

InfiPoints

Mr. Shintaro Samamoto (left)
and Mr. Eisuke Wakisaka (right)
leading a project to accelerate
3D data utilization

Shinryo Corporation is positive about utilizing 3D data in the planning of renewal work. They achieved their goals to reduce lead time, improve work efficiency, and even enhance the work safety of the site engineers, by introducing 3D laser scanners and InfiPoints to obtain and process point cloud data.

Challenges and Opportunities in the Utilization of 3D Laser Scanners for Renewal Work

Shinryo contracts for equipment installation and renewal work at buildings and facilities across Japan. They have been a pioneer in utilizing 3D data to increase work efficiency.
When working with new buildings, drawings are available for CAD model creation. However, when working with older buildings, drawings may not even exist. If drawings do exist, they probably do not match the current state of the building after years of different renovations. This necessitated the need to create 3D data through on-site physical measurements, which is both time and work consuming especially when it requires scaffolding to measure high and hard-to-reach places. Sometimes, it is not even possible to conduct physical measurements because the heat from the equipment is too intense.
To resolve these issues, Shinryo, led by its Research and Development Center, launched a project to investigate the advantages and possible issues of introducing 3D laser scanners to their processes. The goal was to obtain the 3D data of the building’s interior and outline of the equipment within the building without making physical contact. Due to significant technological innovations over the past few years, 3D scanners have had their accuracy improved tremendously while also being more affordable. Additionally, Shinryo determined that this technology would also necessitate new software to visualize the huge amounts of point cloud data generated by the 3D scanners. This software would need the best performance, and could easily conduct virtual simulations.

3D scanning existing equipment
A photo image (left) and obtained 3D scanned point cloud data (right)

Meeting InfiPoints, One-stop Solution for Point Cloud Utilization

Shinryo evaluated several tools to handle point cloud data, and chose Elysium’s InfiPoints for the following factors:

Has the capability to view huge amounts of point cloud data without sacrificing performance (Data size: A few gigabytes / Object: Large building)
Has the capability to cover the entire point cloud utilization process— from data import to movie creation

InfiPoints is already utilized in production work at Shinryo and continues to contribute improving work efficiency.

Case 1: Improving the Efficiency of 3D Modeling for Renewal Work of DHC Systems

Shinryo’s goal was to improve the efficiency of a refrigerator’s CAD modeling phase during the replacement work in a DHC (District Heating and Cooling) system with the help of InfiPoints.
They began by registering their 3D scanned data, removing noise, and extracting planar and cylindrical shapes using InfiPoints’ 3D modeling functionalities. Next, Shinryo imported the newly generated CAD model to their proprietary in-house CAD system “S-CAD”. Using “S-CAD”, they created a CAD model of existing equipment and the surrounding piping systems. Using 3D scanning was both effective and substantially labor-saving in comparison to the physical measurements of the past. The benefits began to stack when the target object, the multi-layered piping system, was overly difficult to reach due to its height. Finally, they also succeeded in reducing their modeling lead time by utilizing both point clouds and features of InfiPoints.

Left: Point cloud data of a cooling tower for DHC system
Right: CAD model of a cooling tower and surroundings generated from point cloud data

Case 2: Checking Collisions prior to Renewal Work of Air Conditioning System

Shinryo uses InfiPoints in their renewal work of air conditioning machine rooms in large commercial facilities. They extract planar and cylindrical shapes from point clouds and generate CAD models of the piping system to that would remain on site and jointing ducts efficiently in InfiPoints.
Moreover, Shinryo also conducts virtual simulations within InfiPoints — checking interferences against existing equipment such as electrical facilities and fire extinguishing systems. At the same time as those checks, they are manipulating the imported CAD model of new equipment within the newly scanned point clouds.
These upgrades dramatically reduced the rework during the actual renewal work compared to the conventional method of using sketches and photos.

Continuing to Further Efficiency Improvements

In line with the growing trend toward utilization of BIM (Building Information Modeling) models and factors such as Shinryo’s customer sites being spread all over Japan, Shinryo will have an ongoing challenge. Many of these customer site are, or will become aged in the near future. To solve this problem, Shinryo needs to know how efficiently and accurately they can create 3D CAD data of these existing facilities and conduct renewal work while minimizing both labor and manual operation costs.

Due to factors such as these, Shinryo continues to investigate new innovative methods to enhance their work efficiency.