Automatic architecture model generation based on object hierarchy

Terrestrial laser scanner (TLS) can be used to acquire 3D facade information of modern architectures, represented as point cloud data (PCD). Basic shape elements of an architecture, like windows and doors, should be recovered in reconstruction; and the model should be represented corresponding to the information of architectural design, such as lines and polygons. Most recent approaches could not reconstruct models automatically with designed shape details. Either user's interactions are needed [Zheng et al. 2010; Nan et al. 2010]; or the reconstructed model is coarse without information of shape details. Therefore, it is necessary to develop new algorithms to generate geometric models automatically, fitting well the design information of architectural PCD. A novel framework is proposed to generate explicitly an architectural model from scanned points of an existing architecture. An automatic, hierarchical and fast facade reconstruction framework is presented based on a novel combination of facade structures, detailed windows propagation, hierarchical model consolidation and contextual semantic representations. As a result, a high-quality geometric model of an architecture ia generated. Figure 1 shows the procedure of this work, from building detection, to planar region decomposition, to boundary point extraction, and to the consolidated hierarchal model.