Semantic Building Information Modeling and high definition surveys for Cultural Heritage sites

In recent years, digital technology devoted to the building design has experienced significant advancements allowing to reach, by means of the Building Information Modeling, those goals only imagined since the mid-Seventies of the last century. The BIM process, bearer of several advantages for actors and designers who implement it in their workflow, may be employed even in various case studies related to some interventions on the existing architectural Cultural Heritage. The semantics typical of the classical architecture, so pervasive in the European urban landscape, as well as the Modern or Contemporary architecture features, coincide with the self-conscious structure made of “smart objects” proper of BIM, which proves to be an effective system to document component relationships. However, the translation of existing buildings geometric information, acquired using the common techniques of laser scanning and digital photogrammetry, into BIM objects, is still a critical process that this paper aims to investigate, describing possible methods and approaches.