3D point cloud help
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Hello all,
Well I'm new to sketchup and having some issues. I'm working with a ~700,000 point point cloud and am trying to directly import it and model it in sketch up. Well needless to say the program doesn't like it, I'm thinking it's more of my processor than the program but it's painfully slow (using a Mac book pro and OS 10.5). I'm importing a DXF file from leica Geosystems Cyclone viewer off of a Leica ScanStation2. The structure is large (an amphitheater) and I'm trying to see if it is possible to model it solely in Sketchup without having to do and TIN work in Cyclone. What I'm trying to do now is decimate the point cloud so that it can be easily rendered into a model structure manually, but I feel as though I'm loosing the data I need to accurately model everything and I'm getting the feeling that I'm going about this the wrong way. I'm thinking it might be better to do TIN surfaces in another software and import that for finishing in skethup, but in reality I have no clue.
Has anyone done any work like this before? I would appreciate any advice.
thanks in advance
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700,000 points in a cloud is very large for SU, though I think it could technically do it. Didier has a cloud.rb script that will read the points and turn them into a terrain. Are you using that script?
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No I haven't looked into that yet, but I am now. I am curious though as it's designed for terrain would it have issues modeling a structure?
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It's for terrain so it would try to connect the points with a continuous mesh. You can still give it a try since at least you'd have some reference.
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I do have a terrain element so I will definitely use it for that.
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Although it's rather simplistic, I wrote a little tutorial of Didier's "cloud" Ruby a while back.
I hope it will help you a bit.
http://www.pushpullbar.com/forums/ruby-scripts/9467-visual-index-ruby-scripts.html#post138591 -
Thanks, again I'm really new to this so I appreciate all the help.
I'll read your how to for sure.
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Interesting. Do your points include "normal" info, or direction info or something? Is there something that defines which direction points outward?
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Sorry it's taken so long to reply.
The point data is "normal", just XYX data on a pre-established datum. The data is nothing fancy, just toying with ways to post process the data outside of the proprietary software for the scanner as it dosen't automatically generate hard surface models.
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@frogfish said:
just toying with ways to post process the data outside of the proprietary software for the scanner as it dosen't automatically generate hard surface models.
Thats interesting. Is it LiDar? I thought that renting a LiDar machine gives you a month long license to somesoftware will the process your scanned pointcloud. I'm sure there are different systems out there though. Perhaps not all come with that sweet deal.
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Yep it's a LiDAR based scanner, I don't rent it though my colleague owns it and I borrow it from him. I have access to the software for it, Leica's software is called cyclone, which is great, but It isn't all to mac compatible so I need to be on a computer with a license to use it. That is where sketchup comes in, I'm trying to see if I can use it effectively vs other software as it's free and works on my mac.
Seems if I decimate the point cloud to sub 10k points there are no problems, so I'm just rendering small parts at a time and them bringing the surfaces together.
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