Is there some free point clouds support engine?

kaas

I tried importing terrain pointclouds a year ago but several plugins failed due to the large number of points. I ended up opening the data in Meshlab, create a mesh and export as dxf to sketchup.

pilou

Sure and Meshlab has a new version from few days!

Rich O Brien

Doesn't Trimble have a Point Cloud extension?

kaas

@rich o brien said:

Doesn't Trimble have a Point Cloud extension?

yes but (as far as I know) it only works for clouds from their own brand laser scanners.

MariusP

@unknownuser said:

Is there some point clouds plugin better that "Undet"? (Undet is full of bugs ,and You must pay for that a lot) .
Thanks for some advice.
adam

Hi,

Yes, I agree that the first Undet for SketchUp version had a lot of bugs, but this software is constantly developing. The latest version is stable.

MariusP

@unknownuser said:

Is there some point clouds plugin better that "Undet"? (Undet is full of bugs ,and You must pay for that a lot) .
Thanks for some advice.

Undet software is constantly developed. Now we are supporting SketchUp versions: 2017, 2018, 2019. Last releases of Undet for SketchUp plug-in are stable for professional work with very attractive licensing

It is currently the only add-on in the market, allowing you to use any size point clouds directly in SketchUp.

Mike Amos

I would hardly expect any software company to claim anything other than having a great price for their products. Your saying it, does not make it so.

MariusP

@mike amos said:

I would hardly expect any software company to claim anything other than having a great price for their products. Your saying it, does not make it so.

Hi Mike, If you have any other option to work with point clouds in SketchUp with better-licensing options and price list please share it with us. I believe that 50€ - 1-month license without further commitment is an attractive price and allows companies to easily expand when needed.

Mike Amos

I would rather wait for users to make the claim than the company that makes the product. Gerald Ratner comes to mind.

mozzie

Suggestions;

Didier Bur's truly excellent points cloud plugin (Cloud v8.0bxx) is excellent and well supported - get it from the plug-in store. Fredo's Toposhaper will generate surfaces from that data.
If you need to do more work on it, import and preprocess in a GIS like QGIS and then export as a shapefile and import that into SU using the Spirix shapefile importer (https://sites.google.com/site/spirixcode/code/spirix_shapefile_importer.rb?attredirects=0&d=1).

Ive been using QGIS to match up LIDAR generated 2m contours with imagery and align to the same CRS. Importing using the shapefile importer has required some simple scaling but gives good results.