Pointcloud

Hello All

I am new to this Forum, I am planing on purchasing few licenses of Bricscad. I downloaded a free license to check, and got this issue. what is a *.bpt format is? I deal with pointclouds that comes from Faro and I know that Hexagon is a Lieca owner, does that mean I have to deal with compatibility issues. I hope that these two Mules (Autodesk and Hexagon) stop kicking each other, because the only one is getting kicked is us (the consumer), I already seen it in Cadworks, its price doubled in few years.

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Comments

  • Uh, needed some time until I finally found an import option for Pointclouds
    in Drawing Explorer instead of Imports.
    And I also see *.bpt option only.

    I don't find information about BPT in the www (duckduckgo here)
    and nothing about Pointclouds in Help Center.

    Any help welcome.

  • @Michael Mayer said:
    Uh, needed some time until I finally found an import option for Pointclouds
    in Drawing Explorer instead of Imports.
    And I also see *.bpt option only.

    I don't find information about BPT in the www (duckduckgo here)
    and nothing about Pointclouds in Help Center.

    Raw point cloud data are not suitable to be attached directly to BricsCAD, because that could never work efficient. Autodesk therefore introduced rcp files, for which they provided the software Recap. Since rcp files are a proprietary format, we cannot create them and we introduced our own counterpart bpt (Bricsys Point Tree), which can be created with the BricsCAD command POINTCLOUDPREPROCESS.

    That command now supports conversion of *.pts, *.ptx and *.las for now (other formats are planned in the future) to bpt, which then can be attached to BricsCAD.

  • Michael Mayer
    edited November 2018

    POINTCLOUDPREPROCESS. That command now supports conversion of *.pts, *.ptx and *.las for now (other formats are planned in the future) to bpt, which then can be attached to BricsCAD.

    OK, that is fine.
    So I can test it.

    But why didn't POINTCLOUDPREPROCESS find its way into
    Menu>File>Import>Pointcloud: *.pts/ *.ptx/ *.las
    which will simply do the conversion and BPT attachment for me ?

  • Well, at first we wanted to do something like that.

    However, during the development, we got in touch with users that process really huge datasets (order of 10^9 to even 10^11 points), which would take hours to even days to process. The good thing however is that this preprocessing only needs to be done once per dataset, and when ready, BricsCAD is able to use it without choking in memory usage (only the points visible at that moment are loaded) and can be updated without losing too much responsivity...

    So in the near future, we will rather further decouple this preprocessing, and give the user a way to perform this preprocessing in a way that has least interference with actually working in BricsCAD. Autodesk even has a standalone application for that, called Recap. We rather think now to use something like a windows service running in the background, notifying you when the preprocessing is ready.

  • Great to see one more Brics master-of-his-subject showing up in the forum, frooms.

    I see you once before also, in https://forum.bricsys.com/discussion/comment/33173/#Comment_33173 , May 2017. At that point I was asking whether pointcloud enablement would be accompanied by similarly huge mesh dataset-enablement, mesh being the preferred output of some of the various reality-capture softwares out there e.g. game-changing https://www.capturingreality.com "10x Faster Than Anything On The Market".

    Laser-scanned pointclouds are a mature technology which has limitations (high cost amongst them) whereas the photogrammetry alternative, often outputting meshes, with or without photorealistic texturing, is evolving fast with huge potential yet to come (and low cost). Meshes at least as useful in AEC, if not more so, than point clouds, moving easily in future into video, VR, AR etc.

    So what are the plans for meshes in Brics?

  • Michael Mayer
    edited November 2018

    It took a while to find a flower in PTS with 14 MB and some kind of
    building with environment with 144 MB.
    Both POINTCLOUDPREPROCESSed pretty fast and attached,
    but I don't see anything beside a Bounding Box Cube (?)

    Is that just an OpenGL issue because I use a Windows on a VM only ?

    BTW,
    when attaching and browsing for a BPT, you have to switch Explorer
    options to "All File Types" first to be able to find your BPTs,
    as they are not included in standard Formats of Drawing Explorer.

    BTW2,
    both load fine in Vectorworks for me.

  • Thanks frooms, I tried it with the POINTCLOUDPREPROCESS command, it worked well and the point cloud got loaded although the size i used was not large. but not many tools are available to manipulate the pointcloud, hopefully in the future.

  • HaiAnhJumi
    edited November 2018

    I tried it with the POINTCLOUDPREPROCESS command, it works fine and the point cloud is loaded although the size I have used is not large. But really not too much use. Hoping for something in the future
    http://nuoigada.com/cach-nuoi-ga-da-cua-hay-co-luc-ngay-tu-khi-con-nho/

  • @Bashar said:
    Thanks frooms, I tried it with the POINTCLOUDPREPROCESS command, it worked well and the point cloud got loaded although the size i used was not large. but not many tools are available to manipulate the pointcloud, hopefully in the future.

    Additional functionality will come with time. There are 3rd party options for BricsCAD if you require something more fully featured and are prepared to pay. There are also free options, Cloudcompare is a good example.

    Regards,
    Jason Bourhill
    CAD Concepts

  • is in-session pointcloud clipping part of future plans for bricscad?
    Isolating a small portion of the cloud can
    1) make things faster to deal with.
    2) focus on an important detail in the data.
    3) turn the cloud into a model 'by hand' using primitives and fitting to the cloud.

    pretty happy i can bring pointclouds into bricscad now, thanks guys. Albeit having to convert from native to bpt (ill deal with it).

  • frooms
    edited December 2018

    @HaiAnhJumi said:

    I tried it with the POINTCLOUDPREPROCESS command, it works fine and the point cloud is loaded although the size I have used is not large. But really not too much use. Hoping for something in the future
    http://nuoigada.com/cach-nuoi-ga-da-cua-hay-co-luc-ngay-tu-khi-con-nho/

    For now, it is indeed limited to attaching, and recently snapping while drawing lines or polylines in sectionplanes also works...

  • frooms
    edited December 2018

    @stimpy9000 said:
    is in-session pointcloud clipping part of future plans for bricscad?
    Isolating a small portion of the cloud can
    1) make things faster to deal with.
    2) focus on an important detail in the data.
    3) turn the cloud into a model 'by hand' using primitives and fitting to the cloud.

    pretty happy i can bring pointclouds into bricscad now, thanks guys. Albeit having to convert from native to bpt (ill deal with it).

    Bpt is the BricsCAD counterpart of AutoCAD's rcp, and allows the points first to be organized in a more efficient way for easier access during manipulations...

    For clipping, you can use SECTIONPLANE...

  • @Bashar said:
    Thanks frooms, I tried it with the POINTCLOUDPREPROCESS command, it worked well and the point cloud got loaded although the size i used was not large. but not many tools are available to manipulate the pointcloud, hopefully in the future.

    Which tools to manipulate a point cloud would you like to see?

  • mpedra
    edited December 2018
    Buongiomo qualcuno usa worxcloud di leica per bricscad?
  • @frooms said:

    @Bashar said:
    Thanks frooms, I tried it with the POINTCLOUDPREPROCESS command, it worked well and the point cloud got loaded although the size i used was not large. but not many tools are available to manipulate the pointcloud, hopefully in the future.

    Which tools to manipulate a point cloud would you like to see?

    I would like to be able to select an area to work with and hide the rest, control the density and size of the point in the pointcloud, snap to the center of a circular object.

  • frooms
    edited December 2018

    @Michael Mayer said:
    It took a while to find a flower in PTS with 14 MB and some kind of
    building with environment with 144 MB.
    Both POINTCLOUDPREPROCESSed pretty fast and attached,
    but I don't see anything beside a Bounding Box Cube (?)

    Is that just an OpenGL issue because I use a Windows on a VM only ?

    BTW,
    when attaching and browsing for a BPT, you have to switch Explorer
    options to "All File Types" first to be able to find your BPTs,
    as they are not included in standard Formats of Drawing Explorer.

    BTW2,
    both load fine in Vectorworks for me.

    Sounds like a bug to me. Could you submit a support request for this with the used test files attached? Then it can be investigated in more detail by the related developers...

  • @Bashar said:

    @frooms said:

    @Bashar said:
    Thanks frooms, I tried it with the POINTCLOUDPREPROCESS command, it worked well and the point cloud got loaded although the size i used was not large. but not many tools are available to manipulate the pointcloud, hopefully in the future.

    Which tools to manipulate a point cloud would you like to see?

    I would like to be able to select an area to work with and hide the rest, control the density and size of the point in the pointcloud, snap to the center of a circular object.

    Could SECTIONPLANE help to select an area to work?

  • stimpy9000
    edited December 2018

    @frooms said:

    Could SECTIONPLANE help to select an area to work?

    yes it seems you can use SectionPlane but it takes a lot longer bc you need to cut multiple sections. The ability to define a box or closed polygon area will help. Think of it this way; I may have a point cloud of an entire 3 story building, but i want to examine one particular break box on the second floor, and just that. What tool can we use to best do that?

  • frooms
    edited December 2018

    @stimpy9000 said:

    @frooms said:

    Could SECTIONPLANE help to select an area to work?

    yes it seems you can use SectionPlane but it takes a lot longer bc you need to cut multiple sections. The ability to define a box or closed polygon area will help. Think of it this way; I may have a point cloud of an entire 3 story building, but i want to examine one particular break box on the second floor, and just that. What tool can we use to best do that?

    Are you familiar with the fact that a SECTIONPLANE can have the following states (can be changed in the properties):
    1) plane: clips everything on one side of an infinite plane
    2) volume: see it as a box limited in 3 dimensions. You can change the dimensions by grabbing the green arrows when it is selected
    3) boundary: is a bit like a volume, but without top nor bottom plane

    See also https://help.bricsys.com/hc/en-us/articles/360006609414-SectionPlaneSettings for more information

    Could this already help you a bit further?

  • Volume sounds good to me.
    Does such clipping unload the non-visible part of the point cloud, presumably speeding up processes?

  • I wasnt familiar that section plane would do 'volume'. Ill look into. this may help prepare 3d views of solids in viewports as well. Thanks frooms.

  • @frooms said:

    Sounds like a bug to me. Could you submit a support request for this with the used test files attached? Then it can be investigated in more detail by the related developers...

    I should do ...

    I tried again and found 2 PTS that I converted successfully to BPT.
    And I see only a square bounding box.

    a) is there any pointcloud download file, that is working for others ?
    b) are there any special settings or setups you did that you can see yours ?

  • frooms
    edited December 2018

    @Michael Mayer said:

    @frooms said:

    Sounds like a bug to me. Could you submit a support request for this with the used test files attached? Then it can be investigated in more detail by the related developers...

    I should do ...

    I tried again and found 2 PTS that I converted successfully to BPT.
    And I see only a square bounding box.

    a) is there any pointcloud download file, that is working for others ?
    b) are there any special settings or setups you did that you can see yours ?

    Try for example pump.ptx from http://www.libe57.org/data.html (it's a bit hidden in section 7: multiple scans).

    Also any las I tried from https://catalog.data.gov/dataset/lidar-point-cloud-usgs-national-map seems to work for me (the button "search datasets within this collection" helps you to limit the area in the USA in which so search, e.g., by drawing with the pencil on the map). Selecting then one of the dataset within the selection allows you to download the las file of that area

    Pts files are usually a simple conversion format that can be exported from programs like CloudCompare and even from Autodesk Recap...

    But please also create a support request with the data that didn't work so any possible issues can be solved

  • Thanks a lot !
    The pump works fine and also need reasonably longer to convert !
    I think I had bad downloads or unfinished downloads before ....

    But I will check them again.

  • I don't get it - the other files work too now.

    I had restarted Bricscad and now did conversion and attaching BPT
    from Drawing Explorer.
    At my first try I used Commandline input ...

  • mpedra
    edited December 2018

    who uses lex worxcloud for bricscad?
    I have been told that for now it only works on version 18.2 of bricscad; in version 18.2 there is no pointcloudpreprocess command to turn the leica pts into btb!
    I can do this with version 19, but how do I put the .btp in brics 18.2 in place to work with worxcloud?

  • Bashar
    edited December 2018

    @mpedra said:
    who uses lex worxcloud for bricscad?
    I have been told that for now it only works on version 18.2 of bricscad; in version 18.2 there is no pointcloudpreprocess command to turn the leica pts into btb!
    I can do this with version 19, but how do I put the .btp in brics 18.2 in place to work with worxcloud?

    Never heard of it and could not find it in the Store as one of the apps, can you send a link

  • @Bashar said:

    @mpedra said:
    who uses lex worxcloud for bricscad?
    I have been told that for now it only works on version 18.2 of bricscad; in version 18.2 there is no pointcloudpreprocess command to turn the leica pts into btb!
    I can do this with version 19, but how do I put the .btp in brics 18.2 in place to work with worxcloud?

    Never heard of it and could not find it in the Store as one of the apps, can you send a link

    Do you mean Cloudworx from Leica?

    https://blog.bricsys.com/cloudworx-bricscad-available/

  • mpedra
    edited December 2018

    yes that. I have been answered by the support that for now works only on brics 18.2 and not on version 19. the problem is that register 360 does not generate a format that cloudworx can import into brics to work. I am forced to switch to register

  • Bashar
    edited December 2018

    @mpedra said:
    yes that. I have been answered by the support that for now works only on brics 18.2 and not on version 19. the problem is that register 360 does not generate a format that cloudworx can import into brics to work. I am forced to switch to register

    I think it should be supported soon knowing that Leica scanners, Cadworx, and Bricscad are all owned by Hexagon and so is cloudworx

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