General Information About Point Clouds

General

A point cloud is a file produced by laser scanning, which can contain millions of points from a scanned object. Depending on the scanner or the file format of the point cloud, the points can also store color information about the measured object. Laser scanning is widely used in repair planning for industrial plants, terrain mapping and construction measurements, for example.

Point cloud formats

Individual point clouds can be read directly as part of the active assembly or alternatively as a separate part model. Supported formats are currently e57, pts, ptx, las, laz, stl, xyz/txt. After import, point clouds can also be used as converted to Vertex models.

The most common formats imported into Vertex are currently e57, pts/ptx and las/laz. These formats also support gray scale or color values for points. Instead, point cloud files with the extension xyz or txt usually only contain the location data of the points.

Import a Point Cloud function allows you to control the thinning out or limiting of points and whether the cloud is brought directly into the active assembly or whether it is read as its own part.