PCS Studio — Point Cloud to Steel & Pipe Model (Standalone, coming soon)
PCS Studio — point cloud to steel and pipe model
PCS Studio finds structural steel and pipework in your scan by itself. It reads the point cloud, recognises the profile or the diameter, places the member, and hands you a model — as a project, or as STEP. A complete Windows program: no AutoCAD, no CAD licence, no plugin to install. Currently in final testing.
What makes it different
Automatic steel extraction
Point at a member, or let Studio sweep the whole scan on its own. It measures the cross-section, matches it against the profile library (HEA, HEB, IPE, UNP, angles, tubes, hollow sections) and places it at the right size and angle — without you selecting regions by hand first.
Adaptive detection engine
No trained model, no black box. Studio measures the surface thickness and point spacing of your scan at every click and sets its own tolerances from that. A dense indoor scan and a coarse outdoor one both work, with no settings to tune.
Pipework and fittings
Cylinder fitting for straight runs, plus bends, segmented bends, tees and reducers. Snap to a pipe library (EN 10220, ANSI/ASME B36.10, Spiro) and a fitting standard (ASME B16.9, EN 10253), so diameters and bend radii come out as real catalogue sizes.
Levels instead of a grid
Set horizontal planes at the heights you choose, name them, and extend steel and pipework up or down to them. Your storey heights, not an arbitrary grid.
Smart Connect, split and join
Trim beams to the column face, run them through to the intersection, split a member in two or merge two into one — the tools you expect from a modelling package.
Hand it over
Export to STEP for the fabricator, save a project file that points at your scans, or work next to a DWG with its layer and Xref structure. Reads LAS, E57, PTS, XYZ and ASC.
What it saves you
Measured on our own reference scan — a steel structure with pipework:
| Method | Time | What you also need |
|---|---|---|
| By hand, no tools | Two to three days | AutoCAD or equivalent |
| With our AutoCAD plugins | Half a day to a day | AutoCAD subscription |
| With PCS Studio | About two hours | Nothing |
Times are from our own reference project and are an indication, not a guarantee — a cluttered scan with members hidden behind pipework will take longer. Ask us for a trial on your own data and see for yourself.
Pricing (expected)
Planned at €119 per month, €995 per year, or €2,250 perpetual including one year of updates and support. Owners of the Piping + Construct plugins upgrade for €1,690. Early-access customers get launch pricing.
All prices in EUR, excluding VAT, and subject to change until release. One licence covers one computer. An AutoCAD subscription costs around €1,900 per year on its own — PCS Studio needs none.