In August of 2016, a team of Autodesk employees including myself Shaan Hurley and led by Autodesk’s Pete Kelsey along with Autodeskers David Dreffs, and Carlos Orona and a team from the US Bureau of Reclamation took on a very large infrastructure project to capture the second largest US dam Glen Canyon Dam located on the border of Utah and Arizona in the beautiful American Southwest. The Glen Canyon Dam is just 16 feet shorter than the Hoover dam and we set out capture high precision 3D data of the structure designed in the 1950’s and constructed in the 1960’s both internally and externally using many methods including photogrammetry, LiDAR, and more. Here is just a teaser video of the 3D model from just the released photogrammetry data at this time. Just to underscore this model and perhaps blow your mind, but this was all created using a standard digital camera and photos were processed to a 3D model using in Autodesk ReMake and Autodesk ReCap.

https://youtu.be/zsGOH64mhtI

Pete Kelsey took the photos for this model while hanging out the door of a helicopter. Talk about the dedication of an Autodesk employee to capture 3D.

I was attacked by a ferocious wild reptile.

Another online article on the project:
How do you digitize one of the largest dams in the US? Find out here: https://on.doi.gov/2mlPO4K

Stay tuned for more about this amazing story in the future and the stunning 3D data we reviewed this morning.  I stayed away from all the dam puns, but this was really a big dam project with lots of dam work and dam data.

Cheers,
Shaan