What should scan to BIM software actually do?

The three kinds

• Tracing helpers. Add-ins that sit inside Revit and snap walls, floors and pipes to the points as you draw. You still model every element. Faster than drawing blind, but the hours are still yours.
• Element finders. Tools that pick out walls, pipes or steel in the cloud and hand you candidates to accept or fix. They save time on repetitive parts and leave the rest to you.
• Model back. You give the tool the scan and get a finished model. Your work moves from drawing to checking.

What to check before you pick one

• Native Revit, not a mesh. Walls should be Revit walls with doors and windows hosted in them, not shapes you have to rebuild.
• IFC too. If anyone on the job uses Archicad, Solibri or a model checker, they will want IFC.
• Checkable against the scan. You should be able to open the model over the points and see where each element came from. A model you cannot check is a model you redraw.
• Your files. E57, LAS and LAZ are the common exports. If your scans live in ReCap, check the tool takes an E57 export.
• The level of detail you sell. Shell only, or ducts, pipes, trays and equipment too. Many tools stop at walls and floors.
• The time to a usable model. Not the time the tool runs, the time until you would hand the model to a client.

Where Landex fits

Tesseract by Landex is the third kind: send the scan, get the model back.