3D Scanning in Chico, CA

Chico was founded in 1860 by John Bidwell, incorporated in 1872, and passed 100,000 residents in the 2020 census. Much of its building stock belongs to the university and the Bidwell legacy. California State University, Chico, founded in 1887, has a 119-acre central campus plus the 800-acre Paul L. Byrne University Farm. Colusa Hall, completed in 1921, is its oldest building, and Kendall Hall went up in 1929 on the site of the original normal school, which burned in 1927. Campus renovations run through the university's own facilities process, and existing-conditions scans of older halls give the design team measured plans and sections instead of decades of partial records. Bidwell Mansion, the 1860s Italianate house designed by Henry W. Cleaveland and a California Historical Landmark, lost its interior to an arson fire on December 11, 2024, while most of its brick and masonry frame remained standing. A damaged masonry shell is a clear case for non-contact measurement: a scan records walls, openings, and lean without anyone touching fragile material.

The other side of Chico is industrial. Sierra Nevada Brewing Company, founded in 1979, has brewed at its current Chico facility since 1989, with a 100-barrel brewhouse, open fermenters, and about 10,000 solar modules on its roofs and parking lot. Breweries, food plants, and orchard-crop processors share one problem: tanks, platforms, and piping packed into buildings that keep changing, where a new vessel has to fit between existing columns and under existing structure. A scan captures the whole room, and we deliver plans, sections, and 3D linework of the equipment and runs the engineer needs. Downtown, the 1928 Senator Theatre and older commercial blocks need the same measured drawings before rehabilitation. For new steel, we verify anchor bolts and structural steel to 1/8 inch from the scan, with total station check shots on any bolt group near tolerance.

Chico is not local for us. Contour Survey is based in Lotus, in El Dorado County, and we travel north for scanning, planning each job as a mobilization: access and shutdown windows agreed in advance, control set first, and enough field days booked to finish coverage in one trip. Primary control is GNSS, secondary control is Trimble S3 total station, and every Trimble X9 scan is registered to it in Trimble Business Center, in US survey feet, with control held to 0.01 US survey feet relative to project control. You receive a registered, cleaned point cloud (E57, LAS, or RCP), scan-to-CAD plans, sections, elevations, 3D linework and coded points, and a report stating the control basis, units, and accuracy achieved. See 3D laser scanning, as-built surveys, and scanning across the North State.