Analyzing Point Clouds

[szahirie]

Hey All,

What software do use to analyze point clouds. My intention is to compare and contrast two different point clouds.

Thank You

[Jeremiah_ROWE]

CloudCompare is excellent for this!

http://www.danielgm.net/cc/

[amwade]

Agreed. Cloud compare is awesome and I've used it alot to compare point clouds from agisoft vs. lidar.

[SAV]

Hi szahirie,

I agree with Jeremiah_ROWE and amwade; CloudCompare is the way to go. Great piece of software (free and open-source).

Here is how to compare two point clouds:
http://www.cloudcompare.org/doc/wiki/index.php?title=Cloud-to-Cloud_Distance

Regards
SAV

P.S. If you plan to use CloudCompare on a regular basis or for commercial applications, please consider to make a small donation to Daniel M who is the 'father' and developer of CloudCompare. He is a great guy.
Here is a message from him that I copied from his website www.cloudcompare.org:

CloudCompare is a Free software. Free as in "Free speech", not as in "free beer".
Developing and maintaining a software is never free (no magic in this world).
If CloudCompare helps you make (or save) a lot of money, then please contribute or donate.
P.S.: if you really can't, at least send us an email to say thanks ;-)
P.P.S.: we are also in need of equipment (scanners, computers, graphic cards, hard drives, etc.)
P.P.P.S.: we also like nice datasets!

[szahirie]

What format would you export your dense cloud as to import into CloudCompare?

[SAV]

Hi szahirie,

Simply use XYZ Point Cloud (*.txt) if you want to keep all the information or LAZ if you want to have a (much) smaller file size. Note that LAZ does not store point normals. You would have to compute them in CloudCompare again in case you need them.

Regards
SAV