Intelligent Cloud Reduction

[orinn]

First, your program is brilliant, and your doing amazing innovating things the industry needs.

One of the most common uses of Cloud Compare I use is point cloud decimation to remove redundant points. What I would like to see is an intelligent evolution of the decimation. Basically I want to spend less points in areas where the features are not changing, like a plain having less points because it is flat, but not lose points on edges. I do a lot of AEC scanning, and often then client is after the HVAC and electrical conduit. Autocad can only handle so many points and I'm wasting millions on the flat floor and the flat walls. Some kind of algorithm that could tell that on the floor, the Z is not changing I dont need as many points in this area, on the wall the X is not changing but the Y and Z are, I can remove points. As it neared corners the point density would increase, then decrease again once things started to flatten out. The end result would have less points on the walls and floors, and lots of points on the pipes, corrners, anywhere where the features were changing. I dont even know if its possible, but it would be awesome.

[daniel]

Indeed this is very interesting and approaching needs have also been asked previously.

I'll add this to the TODO list (well in this case I should say the TO-STUDY list ;)

[orinn]

Thanks for the consideration and the quick reply.

I talked about the idea with a coworker and realized it already exists for a mesh, just not point cloud.
We have intelligent reduction of a mesh, hopefully a similar process can be done for a point cloud.

Mesh Example
http://www.shapeways.com/topics/udesign ... high_2.png

[daniel]

Hi, just for the records this feature will be available in the next 2.6.1 version. On can now tell CC to use the active scalar field to modulate the sampling distance. It can therefore be applied with any scalar fields (curvature, roughness, intensity, etc.).

[orinn]

I have made great use of this and wanted to say thank you for adding it to the program.

I saw an article in Lidar News that talked about how they used Cloud compare to help their project, was happy to see your program in a magazine, even if one of our greatest secret weapons is getting more publicity.

[rudi_stra]

Hi

I used the intelligent point cloud reducing tool to find break lines. When I use the (Edit/Subsample) function with the "use active scalar field" feature, the whole programm crashed.
Can anyone help me to solve this problem?

Thanks

[daniel]

Can you explain more how you produce that crash? (CloudCompare version, number of points, type of scalar field, values, etc.)