Sharing Cultural Values Through 3D Point-Cloud-Based Documentation of Transylvanian Heritage

Abstract

This paper presents a pilot educational workflow that couples 3D remote sensing with heritage-driven pedagogy by engaging architecture master’s students in the documentation and digital archiving of Transylvanian cultural sites. Using terrestrial and mobile 3D scanning, students documented multiple typologies—wooden churches (Târgușor, Tioltiur), historical ensembles (Mociu, Coplean), industrial sites (1 Mai–Luduș, Vânătorilor–Luduș), and an urban street segment (Potaissa)—to generate dense point clouds that served as the basis for geometric reconstruction, semantic interpretation, and condition assessment. The study describes how the characteristics of different construction systems (timber, brick, stone, mixed structures) relate to point-cloud quality, survey coverage, and subsequent CAD/BIM drafting, with attention to the qualitative reading of minor deformations in wooden churches and of degradation patterns in masonry and industrial buildings. We also consider how artefacts in the data (noise, occlusions, registration errors) affect scene understanding and the interpretation of derived observations relevant to condition assessment and, prospectively, to monitoring. For the Tioltiur dual-sensor case, the TLS and SLAM datasets were compared through an internal CloudCompare registration check (final RMS 0.1121 on 50,000 points, fixed scale 1.0 and theoretical overlap 100%), surface-density displays (r = 0.005 for the Z+F dataset and for the GeoSLAM dataset), fitted-wall-plane readings (dip values around 89 deg. and 85 deg.) and a longitudinal section documenting roof/vault deformation. Beyond technical performance, the paper examines the self-reported formative impact on students’ digital skills and their understanding of cultural values, arguing that participation in 3D data acquisition, processing, and interpretation positions them as co-creators of a living digital archive. Pre- and post-workshop questionnaires (n = 13 each) are analysed descriptively—counts, percentages and medians with interquartile ranges—because the two instruments are unmatched and carry no shared identifier, so no paired test is applied; post-workshop self-ratings of technical competence, heritage understanding, archival awareness and collaboration were consistently high (medians 4–5), with uneven access to VR the main gap. By connecting point-cloud-based documentation workflows with heritage education, the project outlines a transferable, monitoring-ready baseline model in which 3D remote sensing supports both careful documentation and the transmission of regional identity and cultural meaning in architectural training. As an exploratory pilot with a small, self-reported sample, the study reports descriptive and qualitative findings rather than validated metric or statistical results.