3D Scanning in Sunnyvale, CA

Sunnyvale was an industrial town before it was a tech town. It incorporated in December 1912, and after the 1906 earthquake destroyed the Joshua Hendy Iron Works in San Francisco, the company rebuilt in Sunnyvale on land the town offered free. During World War II the plant built engines for 754 of the 2,751 Liberty ships, more than any other plant in the country. Westinghouse bought it in 1947 and sold it to Northrop Grumman in 1996, which named it Northrop Grumman Marine Systems. Lockheed moved its headquarters to Sunnyvale in 1956. Heavy plants and aerospace buildings of that era carry crane runways, equipment foundations, pits, and decades of modifications. When one is re-equipped or converted, a scan records the structure, overhead, and slab as they are, and we deliver plans, sections, and slab deviation and levelness maps.

Northwest of the city lies Moffett Federal Airfield, which sits in unincorporated Santa Clara County between northern Sunnyvale and northern Mountain View and is run by NASA Ames Research Center. Its Hangar One, built in 1933, is 1,133 feet long and 308 feet wide and covers about 8 acres; its restoration was reported complete in December 2025. Hangar Two is one of the largest unsupported wooden structures in the country, and Hangar Three was demolished in 2024. Structures at that scale are where long-range scanning beats any other method, and any such work runs under the owner's access and security rules. Most of Sunnyvale's work is closer to the ground. The southern half of the city has 16 Eichler tracts with more than 1,100 homes, and remodels and additions on those houses start from measured plans and sections rather than the original brochure drawings.

Contour Survey is based in Lotus, in El Dorado County, and works throughout the Bay Area. Control comes first: primary GNSS, secondary control by Trimble S3 total station, and every Trimble X9 scan tied to that network, processed in Trimble Business Center in US survey feet. Control is held to 0.01 US survey feet relative to project control. 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. You receive a registered, cleaned point cloud (E57, LAS, or RCP), scan-to-CAD drawings, 3D linework, and coded points your team can model from. See 3D laser scanning, as-built surveys, scanning in Santa Clara, and our Sunnyvale surveying page.