3D Scanning in Fresno, CA

Fresno began in 1872 as a Central Pacific Railroad station and had grown to 542,107 people by the 2020 census, making it the fifth-largest city in California. Its downtown still shows the boom years. The Helm Building, finished in 1914, is called Fresno's first skyscraper. The 15-story Pacific Southwest Building at 1060 Fulton Street, finished in 1925, is still the tallest building in the city and now has condominiums on its upper floors. Fulton Street became the Fulton Mall, a pedestrian mall designed by Garrett Eckbo that opened in 1964, and the street reopened to cars in 2017. Conversions of old bank and office towers to housing or mixed use depend on measured floor plates, cores, and facades, and a scan captures them in one visit. North of downtown, the Forestiere Underground Gardens, dug by hand from 1906 to 1946, cover about 10 acres on three levels as deep as 23 feet, without any blueprints. The gardens have been on the National Register since 1977. Irregular underground space like that is close to impossible to measure with a tape and simple for a scanner.

The biggest construction job in the region runs right through the city. California High-Speed Rail has 119 miles under construction from Madera to near Shafter. In Fresno, the 4,741-foot San Joaquin River Viaduct, finished in May 2021, uses a concrete arch over the river and a pergola structure to carry the tracks over the Union Pacific line. Structures and nearby buildings along a corridor like that call for as-built documentation on survey control. The regional economy also rests on large-scale agriculture, so processing plants, packing houses, and cold storage are a big share of Fresno's industrial buildings. Expansions there need clear heights, column grids, overhead piping, and slab deviation and levelness maps. On 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. Hospital work, including at Community Regional Medical Center, needs measured above-ceiling space before design.

We are based in Lotus in El Dorado County, and Fresno is a long drive. We travel here for scanning and plan each trip as a mobilization, with control, scanning, and check shots done together so the field days count. Primary control is GNSS, secondary control is carried with a Trimble S3, and every Trimble X9 setup is tied to that network. Processing happens 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 in E57, LAS, or RCP, scan-to-CAD plans, sections, elevations, 3D linework, coded points, and a report stating the control basis, units, and accuracy achieved. See 3D laser scanning, construction verification, as-built surveys, and scanning in Merced.