You may recall Intergraph was a CAD company that selling turn-key systems to architects in the 1980’s. I was working for them then. Yesterday a Swedish company named Hexagon bought Intergraph for $2.13 billion. They make surveying equipment and measuring instruments. Although this technology isn’t used much for architecture (yet) it is quite well established in the Global Information Systems (GIS) and Process, Power & Marine (PP&M) areas. Here is a link to a presentation given by the CEO of Hexagon yesterday.
http://storm.zoomvisionmamato.com/player/hexagon/objects/zfjctvqm/#zvm00-13
Although he doesn’t talk about architecture, the middle part of his presentation is quite informative as to the current state and projected future of merging scanning technology with CAD.
I also found the current leader in converting 3D scans (point clouds) into AutoCAD. It is a company called Kubit. You may want to check out their web site.
I would be interested in talking to anyone who is currently using scanning technology in conjunction with AutoCAD or Revit to create architectural drawings.
