(Autodesk, FARO: San Rafael, CA; Lake Mary, FL) -- Autodesk Inc. a provider of 3-D design, engineering, and entertainment software, and FARO, the provider of portable measurement and imaging solutions, announce their collaboration to add direct integration of point cloud data to AutoCAD 2011 software. FARO and Autodesk have also entered into an agreement for FARO to promote AutoCAD Plant 3D software as its preferred 3-D modeling application for the process plant industry.

In addition, Autodesk announces that the FARO Laser Scanner Photon is its preferred hardware for point cloud data capture of process plant facilities using AutoCAD Plant 3D.

Through joint engineering and development efforts, AutoCAD 2011 allows the direct import of binary scan data from FARO Scene, FARO’s scan processing software for the FARO laser scanner. The introduction of a dedicated point cloud platform that seamlessly integrates into AutoCAD will allow customers to do more than ever before. AutoCAD 2011 supports up to 2 billion points, which can be used with the enhanced tools for 3-D modeling to enable extremely high-performance usage of the scan data.

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