3D Scanning in Modesto, CA

Modesto was founded in 1870 and incorporated in 1884, and the Modesto Arch at 9th and I streets has carried the city's motto, "Water, Wealth, Contentment, Health," since 1912. The motto is a fair summary of how the city's building stock came to be. Ernest and Julio Gallo started their winery in Modesto in 1933, and it is now the largest family-owned winery in the United States, with its own glass-making subsidiary. Processing plants here have been expanded and re-tooled for decades, and the change is not always in one direction. In January 2026 Del Monte announced it would close its Modesto fruit cannery. Whether a plant is adding a line or a site is being studied for a new owner, the first need is the same: measured structure, equipment, piping, and slab conditions instead of drawings from several renovations ago.

The water half of the motto has its own structures. The Modesto Irrigation District, formed in July 1887 as the second irrigation district in California, delivers irrigation water and electricity and supplies drinking water to the city. Its system on the Tuolumne River includes the Don Pedro Dam, first completed in 1923 and replaced by a larger dam in 1971. Canal structures, pump stations, and substations are scanned for the agencies and engineers that own them, under the owner's access rules, with targets on control so a later epoch lands in the same frame. Health care is the other big category. Memorial Medical Center and Doctors Medical Center are two of the city's largest employers, and hospital renovation is where scanning helps most: occupied floors, crowded ceilings, and short access windows. Downtown, older commercial buildings near the arch and the Gallo Center for the Arts, opened in 2007, come up for renovation and tenant work too.

Control comes first: primary GNSS, secondary control by Trimble S3 total station, and each Trimble X9 scan tied to that network, processed in Trimble Business Center in US survey feet and 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 and coded points, and a report stating the control basis, units, and accuracy achieved. New industrial steel can be checked through construction verification. Contour Survey travels to Modesto from Lotus in El Dorado County and schedules field days as a mobilization. See 3D laser scanning, as-built surveys, scanning across the Central Valley, and scanning in Stockton.