Case Study: Stemar Engineering achieves rapid, millimeter-accurate open-sea ship scanning for conversion projects with Trimble FX 3D Scanner

Charting a New Course in Open-Sea Scanning

Tideway enlisted Blue Offshore and Stemar Engineering to assess converting the stone-dumper Tideway Rollingstone into a cable layer for the Thorntonbank wind park, but accurate line plans were missing and the vessel was active 24/7 on another project, so it couldn’t be held in port for re-measurement. Stemar’s challenge was to capture complete, reliable as-built data in a very short window while the ship remained on schedule.

Stemar completed the work by boarding the vessel overnight and performing 14 Trimble FX 3D scans (six inside the hold, eight around the exterior), using the scanner’s wide field of view and 216,000 pts/s capture rate to finish before the ship reloaded. Back onshore they processed the point clouds with Trimble RealWorks and LASERGen to produce accurate 3D CAD models and a new deck layout; measurements proved accurate to about 3–5 mm, enabling detailed design work and cost estimating while the ship’s schedule was unaffected.

Stemar Engineering

Mark Rood

Managing Partner