Space Shuttle Discovery point cloud

The United States has a treasure trove of engineering wonders scattered from coast to coast. From bridges to tunnels to space ships to gold mines, and more, the National Park Service has been collecting detailed 3D renderings of a wide variety of our engineers' best projects.

The Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) is a joint project of the National Park Service, the American Society of Civil Engineers, and the Library of Congress that has been documenting these great engineering feats.

On Monday, HAER, Autodesk and kubit, an Autodesk developer partner, will announce the technological process of documenting these structures and the 3D underpinnings behind many of these projects. The HAER employs laser scanning technology and kubit software to make 'point clouds' of data that build 3D images of the structures, then utilizes AutoCAD to translate the point data into detailed 3D models and 2D line drawings.

This is the point cloud image of the Space Shuttle Discovery, which made its first flight on August 30, 1984, and its last landing on March 9, 2011.