The most highly publicized uses of contour mapping highlights NASA’s need to detail planetary topography for various reasons. From landing sites to exploration regions, demanding minute details of the area or region assures a mission successfully accomplished.
Beyond topography, buildings, structures, and other features that impact engineering projects come to life with contour mapping. The need and use of spatial geometry drives contour mapping’s future.
The need arises according to Stanford News‘ interview with Martin Fischer, a professor of civil engineering at Stanford, because, “Renovation projects live and die by the quality of information.” Underscoring that many projects involve renovation of buildings, singling out the identifiable factors that turn success to cost overruns.
Doing away with tape measures to redraw building plans, using the new 3D technologies has gone from mapping a few rooms to providing detailed contour maps of the entire building. The advantage is enormous. Every detail from columns, walls and even office furniture receive detailed contouring and exact measuring in the mapping.
From the 3D development came the next step as more builders and engineers began to use the new technology. Collecting point clouds to assist in their construction projects, a new hurdle soon militated against its use, but technology again rose to the occasion. “Through repetition, the computer vision system trained itself to recognize different building elements. . . [and] an algorithm [developed] that can analyze raw point cloud data from an entire building and, without human assistance, identify the rooms, enter each room, and detail the structural elements and furniture,” as reported above by the Stanford News.
Contour mapping drawings have quickly evolved. Algorithms coupled with 3D have served to bring building and structures alive, enabling engineers and others to enter a map to better identify problems, create solutions while providing greater assurance of a project well-done at a savings using an eclectic approach, albeit virtual.
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