3D Scanning in South Lake Tahoe, CA

South Lake Tahoe became a city in 1965 by joining Al Tahoe, Bijou, Bijou Park, Stateline, Tahoe Valley, and Tallac Village, and it still reads as a string of those places, stretched about five miles along US 50 at roughly 6,237 feet. The east end is the visitor district: hotels, restaurants, and shops around Heavenly Village, where a gondola climbs to Heavenly Mountain Resort, which opened on December 15, 1955. The west end is mostly homes clustered around the Y, where US 50 meets State Route 89. Year-round living arrived in the 1950s, when roads began to be plowed all winter. Today that means lodging, retail, and cabins that have been remodeled again and again, plus campus buildings at Lake Tahoe Community College. For a hotel renovation or a change of tenant, a scan captures rooms, corridors, structure, and ceiling space in one pass, so the design team starts from measured conditions.

Work here also runs on the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency's calendar. TRPA was formed in 1969 through a bi-state compact between California and Nevada that Congress ratified, and it regulates land use across the basin. Its grading season runs from May 1 through October 15, and even then soil work is prohibited when a site is covered with snow, saturated, or muddy, or while it is raining. Scanning does not disturb soil, so existing buildings can be measured in winter and spring and the drawings can be ready before the dig window opens. On the shore at the edge of town, the Tallac Historic Site holds three estates built between 1894 and 1923. The Forest Service bought them between 1965 and 1972, and they were listed on the National Register in 1987. Buildings of that age are where non-contact measurement matters most, because the record is taken without touching original material.

Our control starts with GNSS, secondary control is set with a Trimble S3, and Trimble X9 scans are registered to it in Trimble Business Center, in US survey feet, with control held to 0.01 US survey feet relative to project control. Deliverables are a registered, cleaned cloud in E57, LAS, or RCP, scan-to-CAD plans, sections, elevations, 3D linework, coded points, and a report giving the control basis, units, and accuracy achieved. For new steel, we verify anchor bolts and structural steel to 1/8 inch, with total station check shots on any bolt group near tolerance. We come up US 50 from Lotus, through Placerville, and since that highway often closes in winter storms we schedule each trip as a planned mobilization. Our license is Californian, so our work stops at the state line. See 3D laser scanning, scanning in Truckee, and our South Lake Tahoe surveying page.