CloudCompare forum

Hi Daniel,

I've managed to open a point cloud from Cyclone in .pts format in CloudCompare. I'm trying to run a mesh on it but getting the error "Cloud must have normals!"

Anyway around this? I'm no expert in these things! Any help you can provide would be great.

Christian

There's 2 ways of computing normals:
- either use 'Edit > Normals > Compute' (one the cloud is selected)
- or you can try the qPCL plugin (Compute normals)

You'll se that depending on your cloud shape it's not always easy to get a clean result... good luck ;)

Hi Daniel,

I've computed the normals via the qPCL plugin with a search radius of 0.0201 - the default settings. When I run the Poisson Reconstruction my results aren't great. When I increase the value to above 10 the program becomes unresponsive. Do you know of anyway around this? My point cloud is quite complex and has over 6m points - maybe this could be the issue?

Cheers,
Christian

Indeed, for very complex shapes you'll need to use higher levels (11, 12, etc.). And you'll need very clean normals (i.e. all oriented in the right way, smooth, etc.).

Having fun playing with the program :)

Just another quick question, if there anyway to see the attributes of the mesh I've created? Number of faces, etc?

Cheers

Either select (click on) the mesh and then look at the 'properties' panel on the bottom-left. Otherwise, right click on the mesh entry in the database tree and then select the 'Information (recursive)' entry.