If you follow NavVis on LinkedIn, you know our global community of users is huge. Every day, businesses worldwide share how NavVis hardware and software simplify their work. Often, these stories take the form of beautiful, feature-rich point clouds seen within NavVis IVION.
Our global partner network is a big part of our international reach. For example, in Canada, a country defined by scale, complexity, and regional variation, NavVis works closely with Cansel, a trusted local firm with decades of experience in the country’s geospatial field.
Cansel’s role is critical to NavVis’s mission: helping professionals across Canada and the United States adopt smarter, hybrid workflows that blend TLS with dynamic laser scanning.
To give a sense of what’s happening in the industry today, and how adoption is accelerating, Mike Hogan of Cansel put it clearly during a recent webinar: “TLS has long been the standard and won’t go away. But SLAM-based mobile mapping with NavVis provides a complementary piece. It brings speed in collection, ease in processing, and a platform for collaboration, whether with internal teams or external clients. Thanks to these advantages, our customers are expanding their offerings, scaling up, and bidding on more projects.”
And to show what that looks like in practice, we co-hosted that same webinar with one of the teams in Cansel’s network: planit, a scan-to-BIM specialist.
Ilja Ferbers and Renato Zampa from planit walked us through a recent project that put this approach into action: scanning a 60,000 sq ft federal building quickly, accurately, and without compromising on data quality.
The following blog breaks down how planit did it.
A Decade in the Making
planit’s journey started more than ten years ago. Back then, mobile scanning technology was promising but limited. In 2020, a contract with Canada's Department of National Defense became their first major handheld-scanning project. The project was successful, but exposed key issues: drift, image quality, and post-processing complexity.
They soon upgraded to NavVis VLX, which marked a turning point. The data became consistent, colorized, and much easier to model with. “For the first time, the data actually looked nice,” said Ilja, referring to how visual quality is often overlooked in technical specs but essential for modeling.
Cansel played a vital role in this shift. Their team provided hands-on support, helped plan and optimize their scanning workflow, and even offered custom processing files when needed. This local expertise helped ensure the technology was adopted quickly and, just as importantly, used effectively.
The Project That Proved It
A request to create a digital twin of a federal building project presented planit with a real challenge. They needed to capture 60,000 square feet (≈ 5,574 square meters) of detailed space quickly. They also needed to meet an accuracy requirement of 6 millimeters.
To meet both goals, they implemented a hybrid capture strategy:
- NavVis VLX for comprehensive interior scanning
- TLS for ceiling areas, façade detail, and additional control points
- Drone for the roof and hard-to-reach exteriors
- Survey control for anchoring the dataset to a known coordinate system
“NavVis didn’t just fit our workflow. It helped us refine it,” Ilja explained. “The data quality helps us model faster, and NavVis VLX mobility lets us reach where TLS couldn’t.”
The results speak for themselves:
- Less than a week in the field
- Over 2,500 panoramic images captured for modeling reference
- 6 mm verified accuracy
- 75% reduction in on-site scanning time
- 55% lower data capture costs compared to previous methods
All of this data was processed and hosted in NavVis IVION, giving the remote modeling team full access to everything they needed without requiring additional site visits.
Building the Right Workflow
To get results like these, planit had to change how they worked.
Before adopting SLAM, their scan-to-BIM workflow relied on shorter, static scans - like those used with TLS. With NavVis VLX, they learned to trust longer walks, lasting up to an hour. This dramatically increased efficiency, but also introduced new challenges around planning and scanning discipline.
planit followed a clear set of best practices when doing so:
- Walk the site in advance to identify tricky areas
- Prop doors open and turn on lights beforehand to reduce sensor noise
- Avoid foot traffic close to the scanner
- Plan loop closures and overlaps
- Use control points for accuracy and redundancy
- Choose the right resolution based on the deliverable, not by default
By sticking to these practices, the team ensured that even long walks produced clean, accurate, and highly usable datasets.
planit’s workflow and tech stack |
||
|---|---|---|
|
Phase |
Toolset |
What It Added |
| Interior bulk capture | NavVis VLX (45-60 min walks) | High-density color point clouds, panoramic imagery, fast coverage |
| High-detail & control | TLS (exterior façades, ceiling scans, extra targets) | Sub-mm accuracy where needed; anchors NavVis VLX data |
| Roof & site | Drone LiDAR / photogrammetry | Full envelope capture without lifts or roof access |
| Control & geo-ref | Total-station survey, coded targets | 6 mm project accuracy + redundancy |
| Data hub | NavVis IVION | Merged NavVis VLX, TLS, drone; remote modelers work with NavVis IVION |
| Downstream | ReCap, Revit, BIM 360 | Standard design/modelling platforms |
The Business Impact
planit’s standardized, hybrid workflow lets the team tackle buildings of almost any size or type without adding crews or extra site days. As Renato pointed out in the webinar, they have already “digitized tens of thousands of buildings” across Canada and the United States, and the same capture recipe now works for offices, heritage landmarks, laboratories, and mixed-use spaces.
But the value goes well beyond efficiency.
“A digital twin used to be a one-time thing,” Renato said. “Now we treat it as a living dataset, upgraded on a fit-for-purpose basis.”
Because NavVis VLX collects panoramic imagery and dense, colorized point clouds in a single pass, planit leaves the site with everything they need - no return visits, no data gaps. That complete dataset allows them to
- enrich the twin with space and asset management information captured directly from the panoramic tours
- model architectural detail for heritage preservation projects
- run portfolio-level energy simulations and flag buildings that could benefit from ESG retrofits
- integrate BMS and IoT sensor data when a client is ready for real-time monitoring
Thanks to planit’s use of NavVis IVION, the digital twin can grow without fresh field campaigns. That future-proof approach keeps clients close. “Why would a client look for any other company,” Renato asked, “when planit already has all the data kept and standardized?”
In short, what once required more time, equipment, and site access is now repeatable, scalable, and profitable. planit can take on more projects with the same resources, confident that their NavVis-powered workflow will deliver today and evolve tomorrow.
A Smarter Way Forward
planit has shown how modern scanning workflows can transform a business. NavVis VLX and NavVis IVION provide the speed, quality, and flexibility. Cansel delivers the support and knowledge to put it all to work.
Together, they’ve created a smarter, faster way to document the built environment - one that delivers value today, and builds digital twins that last.
Ready to see how NavVis can transform your own workflows?
