

It’s saved in the form of a very large number of points that cover surfaces of an object. So the point cloud that the laser scanner captures is an accurate as-built of an object or space. Point Cloud video created by David Hyland This is what it feels like to fly through a point cloud. If you could spit those points out of a scanner they’d appear as a cloud you could walk within. In the same way, a point cloud is a huge number of tiny data points that exist in three dimensions. The data points usually exist along the x, y, and z coordinates within the 3D scanned space.įrom Sky to Art to Software: Point Clouds, De(mist)ifiedĪ cloud is a 3D mass made up of small droplets, crystals, water, or various chemicals. Scan from Aric Stott’s project, showing a swimming pool and flag details In the case of the swimming pool, Stott’s team scanned the data points and even included the flags hanging above the pool and the plastic dividers used to mark off swimming lanes. These can include walls, windows, ductwork, steel structures, etc. When you take a scan, the laser scanner records a huge number of data points returned from the surfaces in the area you’re scanning.

The long answer calls for a definition of the point cloud.

Many new to laser scanning ask: what’s a point cloud and why is that middle step (importing) needed? The short answer is, scanned information can’t be directly imported to CAD software.
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In one Constructible blog, Aric Stott gave a primer on how to create a 3D CAD model from a 3D laser-scanner, using the example of an Olympic swimming pool and its surroundings.
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In the last step, you’ll export your point cloud from the software and import it into a CAD/BIM system. The software lets you visualize and model the point cloud, which at that stage looks rather like a pixelated, digital version of your site. Next, import the point cloud the scanner creates (and that you don’t initially see) into point-cloud modeling software.
