New frontiers to architectural survey: laser scanner 3D

In each intervention heading to knowledge, cataloguing, conservation, recovery and exploitation of the environmental and architectural assets, survey is a catalysing element. I is a “reconstruct ion” of the assets , through different ways of enquiry (mensoria, historical-critical, archival, bibliographical, technical, technological), carried out with different criteria and proceedings, through the analysis of the reasons for it s coming into being with the pass ing of time. Concerning the existing situation, the scientific debate is focused on the distinction between surveying and survey since we mean by the first one the measuring aspect and by the second one the accumulation of the analysis and studies that have been dealt with by different disciplinary spheres (see also the final note drafted and approved by the partecipants at the Congress in Rome about “Document on Architectural Survey”). For years, surveying has been assigned to specialized architects and engineers’ ability and experience, and its transcript ion has been expressed through not coded graphical forms, which aim at a representation that will be closer to iconic art than to science. Nowadays, surveying operation must document the metrical completeness of grafic data, of those concerning diagnostics , etc. It follows that surveying must have an hypothesis of scientific nature, based upon experience and, therefore , upon experiment repetitiveness. Anyone who is interested in monuments’survey, or generally in architectural and building heritage, knows well what the survey operation’s value and meaning are. He knows how much engagement is required and how many hours of hard work on site are needed to survey, elaborate the data, verify and re-draw a plan, a facade, a cross-section. The bi-dimensional representat ion method, with grafic transcript ion on paper sheet, is a system which is infected by an abstract ing operation with reference to the real perception of an