Cultural heritage structural conservation: computational approaches for Scan-to-FEM model generation

A digital survey is an extremely useful process in civil engineering, as it provides precise data that captures geometry, spatial information, and detailed features. Laser scanning involved in the procedure records a cloud composed of millions of 3D points. For historical objects, building an FEM model is necessary to accurately reflect their mechanical behavior. Cloud2FEM is a procedure that enables robust FEM model generation from a point cloud while taking into account the complex geometry of the surveyed historical building. A comprehensive computational representation entails processing time challenges, which can be mitigated by using the lightest and simplest mesh possible. In this work, an approach to rendering a minimal mesh, requiring minimal user involvement, is presented.