CloudCompare forum

Hello,

One of the projects I am working on is an erosion study where we're thinking of using the 2.5D volume comparison to analyze the before and after of certain trail sections. I am still fairly new to CloudCompare and wanted to see how accurate its measurements are. Would this feature be able to analyze smaller changes in volume, like minor erosion, accurately? Additionally, is there a file type that is recommended for the 2.5D volume comparison or distance comparisons generally (we have mostly been using .ply)?

Thanks!

So the file type won't impact the results.

What will impact them is:
- the points accuracy
- the density of the clouds (the higher, the better the accuracy will be)
- the fact that the data is really 2.5D (there's never 2 surfaces on top of each other along the chosen projection direction)

The volume estimate can be fairly accurate if everything above is properly controlled. Hard to give some numbers though...