A Review of 3D GIS for Use in Creating Virtual Historic Dublin

The product of a laser scan survey of a building or artefact is a point cloud which defines the geometry of the object, and when combined with image data the object edges and material textures can be identified. The point cloud survey is useful for visualisation and also as a record of the 3D surfaces of an object. Where conserva-tion or restoration work is to be carried out on the object conventional orthographic or 3D survey drawings are required. Survey drawings can be created by mapping vectors on to the point cloud or textured point cloud. This is a complex process as the data size of the point cloud is usually very large; also mapping in 3D space onto a point cloud is intricate due to difficulties in…