How a 700-year-old family estate turned into a digital-twin company
When a professional scanning quote for their 700-year-old Catalan estate came back at twice the original price, La Vila 3D’s founders decided to buy the equipment and do it themselves. Nine months later, they’re running that equipment and their client deliveries through AVAG's cloud platform.
Website
Industry
Reality capture / digital twins
Challenges
No usable blueprints existed for a 700-year-old property, and a professional scan quote came in higher than expected
As a brand-new company, they needed a client-facing way to deliver 3D data
They had to define, from scratch, who their customers were and why digital twins are valuable to them
Solutions
AVAG’s cloud platform for photogrammetry and LiDAR processing, replacing plans to offshore data processing entirely
A platform that processes huge datasets and allows sharing so clients can view the models
An FJD Trion P2 mobile LiDAR scanner (with thermal add-on), sourced at the same conference, paired directly into the AVAG workflow
DJI drones including Matrice 4E, Air 3S, Emlid RS2+, RS3 GNSS receivers, Starlink Internet
Results
Ground-based buildings scan completed in about a day, versus roughly ten days with a Matterport Pro3
Aerial scanning produced 2,900 photos processed in five to six hours in AVAG, versus 18–22 hours in-house
Runner-up finish in an international scanning contest using the new Trion P2 + DJI + AVAG workflow
From a renovation quote to a new company
La Vila 3D didn’t start as a services company. They started with a house. The founders bought a 700-year-old property in Catalonia, where they now live, and needed it scanned, since almost no reliable blueprints existed. An architect recommended a specialist do the work, and quoted a price that seemed reasonable.
Then the quote doubled.
“We said, well, what could we do with that money? I might as well buy all the equipment and do it myself,” the founder, Louis Bourgeois, recalls. So they did—a scanner, then more equipment, then more again, until the obvious next step was to make it a company. Equipment purchases began in December, and the months since have been spent learning fast: attending an industry workshop in Florida, and then, on a few days’ notice, flying to a conference in Prague specifically to find the right technology partner.
“We already knew how we wanted the platform to function, how we wanted to get to our customers, and what we wanted to provide to them. That’s when we saw AVAG. I went, wait a minute! You do exactly what we believe we want to do for our customers.”
The old way vs. the new way
Matterport Pro3 (previous method)
Capture time
~10 days for the full estate
Processing time
Matterport Cloud Platform (10-12 hours per day)
Outcome
Customer portal with paid data export (cost varies by format)
— vs —
FJD Trion P2 + AVAG (current method)
Capture time
~1 day
Processing time
~5–6 hours in the AVAG cloud
Outcome
Single source of truth, viewable before download
Testing a solution while still learning the industry
The founder and two employees flew to the 3DISE conference already knowing the shape of the platform they wanted (a customer-friendly portal, not just a rendering engine) and kept coming back to the AVAG booth to work through it.
Other vendors didn't inspire the same confidence. Conversations with hardware reps at other booths repeatedly ran into staff who, in the founder's telling, knew little about their own products. What did work: a same-conference deal for an FJD Trion P2 mobile LiDAR scanner with a thermal add-on, bought a few weeks later from reps who “knew what they were talking about,” plus new relationships with other service providers and specialists met on the floor.
“We left that conference feeling very confident that we were entering the right market and doing the right thing.”
The workflow that replaced an offshoring plan
Before finding AVAG, La Vila 3D’s plan was to send raw data offshore for processing and then hand customers a container of files. So no interface, just data. Two things changed that plan. First, AVAG’s EU-based processing. Second, and more decisively, was the ability to let a client inspect the finished model directly on the AVAG platform before downloading anything.
“The added benefit of actually doing the inspection of the model inside the app was the big aha moment for us. It took the offshore processing completely out of the equation.”
The workflow now runs: field capture (photogrammetry or LiDAR, with control points where needed) → upload to AVAG → cloud processing → client access to a browsable model → download once approved
What the single source of truth actually solved
La Vila 3D looked seriously at a separate cloud rendering engine from another vendor at the same conference, genuinely impressive, and entirely web-based, so nothing needs to be downloaded. But it wasn’t built as a customer interface, only a viewer. That distinction mattered: the founder didn’t want to build or operate a customer-facing web portal and rendering infrastructure at all. What was needed was somewhere to process the data, share it with the customer, and be done, which is a role no existing tool in the company’s stack, including their Odoo-based business systems, could fill.
“What I wanted was a platform where they could go do everything product related. That’s the AVAG way.”
Winning trust before winning contracts
La Vila 3D has spent their early months taking on projects at a full discount to prove out their process before charging for it. A LiDAR scan of a football pitch’s interior and exterior is being prepared for a presentation to the City of Barcelona, paired with an explainer article on point clouds. A second opportunity, scanning large structures under renovation for a company called Goodman in the Port of Barcelona, is in progress on the same no-cost basis.
“We will do as many of those 100% discount jobs as we have to do until somebody wants to pay us. We want to have it wired—fast, and high quality—before we ask anyone to pay.”
“The personal relationship we've already established with AVAG is a key differentiator. That means they’re literally a partner, not just a vendor.”
Louis Bourgeois
Founder, La Vila 3D
Proving it against an established comparison
The clearest validation came from entering a international scanning contest run by the Trion P2’s manufacturer, where La Vila 3D placed second on their first attempt. The submission was a seven-minute video, built around the same 700-year-old estate that started the company:
Building a team and a market position from zero
The company is four people today, the two founders and two employees, with a clear scaling target: one field crew and one processing crew running every weekday by the end of this year, growing to ten field crews and ten processing crews running simultaneously (20 daily operations) within 18 months.
“We’re not a BIM company. We’re a digital twin, a digital replica company. But we want to be Spain’s first choice as that requirement grows.”
AVAG highlights
2,900 photos processed in 5–6 hours
1 platform replacing an offshore processing plan
4-person team, EU-based processing
“What I like about La Vila 3D is how deliberately they've built the business around Spain itself. The company is named after the estate that started it, and that’s not a coincidence. They came to us knowing exactly what they needed: a portal, not just a rendering engine. Watching a brand-new company get that clarity so early and scale a discount-first strategy within months is exactly the kind of partner we want to grow with in Spain.”
Miroslav Staubr
CEO, AVAG Pro
Company details
La Vila 3D
Location
Catalonia, Spain
Founded
Equipment purchases began December; formal operations ramping through the current year
Team size
5.3 km
Flagship project
700-year-old estate scan (company origin project)
Active pilot projects
Football pitch scan for the City of Barcelona; renovation-site scanning for Goodman, Port of Barcelona
Application
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