Streamlining FE and BIM Modeling for Historic Buildings with Point Cloud Transformation

In this paper, a convenient workflow to obtain a simplified lightweight IFC description of a dense point cloud describing a historic building is proposed. The proposed procedure relies on slicing of the point cloud that aims at reconstructing the geometry of the solid. The resulting slices can then be easily employed in the generation of finite element (FE) and architectural building information modeling (BIM) models. In particular, the FE model generation procedure guarantees the obtainment of a conforming solid FE mesh ready to be used for structural purposes. Contextually, the architectural BIM model generation is achieved by slices extrusion to obtain the overall volume of the building. Then, the assembly of independent slice-based meshes is subjected to re-topology to obtain the overall watertight bounding surface of the building. A real historic structure is here used to show the effectiveness of the FE and BIM model generation procedures. Finally, the BIM model generation of an actual historic structure is carried out through the proposed workflow.