3D Scanning in Tracy, CA

Tracy began as a railroad town. The Central Pacific built lines from Sacramento through Stockton toward the Bay Area beginning in 1868, and a new branch and junction opened in 1878 at a spot named for railroad director J.J. Tracy. The city incorporated in 1910. Interstates 205, 580, and 5 now form a triangle around it, and that location is why Tracy has become a distribution center. The City of Tracy's Cordes Ranch Specific Plan covers about 1,774 acres at Mountain House Parkway and I-205, planned for business park, manufacturing, and distribution uses. Older federal logistics land sits here too: the 448-acre Tracy facility of the Defense Distribution Depot San Joaquin opened in 1942. Big distribution buildings go up fast, and the steel goes on the anchor bolts that are already in the slab. If a bolt group is out of position, it is far cheaper to find it before the erector does.

That is the main scanning job in Tracy. We scan the bolt groups after the pour and compare them to design, verifying anchor bolts and structural steel to 1/8 inch from the scan with total station check shots on any bolt group near tolerance. Tighter verification is available on request, and the report states the accuracy achieved. Slabs can be mapped for deviation and levelness, before and after the pour. The water system around Tracy is the other piece. The Bureau of Reclamation's C.W. Bill Jones Pumping Plant, completed in 1951 about nine miles northwest of the city, lifts water into the Delta-Mendota Canal, which runs 117 miles south to Mendota Pool. Pump plants, intake structures, and canal-side facilities like these are scanned for the agencies and engineers responsible for them, under the owner's access and security rules, with targets tied to control so later scans can be compared directly.

Our control comes first: primary GNSS control, secondary control by Trimble S3 total station, and every Trimble X9 setup tied to that network, processed 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 point cloud (E57, LAS, or RCP), scan-to-CAD plans, sections, elevations, 3D linework and coded points, and a report with the control basis, units, and accuracy. Contour Survey is based in Lotus, El Dorado County, and plans Tracy work as a scheduled mobilization, which suits construction sequences where the pour dates are known ahead. See construction verification, 3D laser scanning, as-built surveys, and scanning in Stockton.