The beautiful 3D behind America's great engineering feats
The Historic American Engineering Record contains gorgeous 3D documentation of big projects like the Space Shuttle Discovery, some of the country's great bridges, and more.
Space Shuttle Discovery point cloud
The Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) is a joint project of the National Park Service, the American Society of Civil Engineers, and the Library of Congress that has been documenting these great engineering feats.
On Monday, HAER, Autodesk and kubit, an Autodesk developer partner, will announce the technological process of documenting these structures and the 3D underpinnings behind many of these projects. The HAER employs laser scanning technology and kubit software to make 'point clouds' of data that build 3D images of the structures, then utilizes AutoCAD to translate the point data into detailed 3D models and 2D line drawings.
This is the point cloud image of the Space Shuttle Discovery, which made its first flight on August 30, 1984, and its last landing on March 9, 2011.