Patent ID: 7130774

Claim:
A method for recording data for use in creating measured drawings of a building, site, or structure, comprising the steps of: providing a portable data recording device; acquiring, either automatically by the portable data recording device or as user input into the portable data recording device, a sequence of data describing the components of a building, site, or structure, including any of the levels, spaces, or objects contained therein, wherein for a particular component the data describing that the particular component includes at least a partial placement, orientation, or dimension information that relates the particular component to a previously acquired component in the sequence; using a knowledge base, and a relationship between the components, to automatically determine remaining placement, orientation and or dimension information for the particular component; storing the data describing the components into the portable data recording device as a plurality of hierarchically linked data entries; and subsequently retrieving the data from the portable data recording device and parsing the data entries to create a measured drawing of the building, site, or structure.