Toggle Solid Point Cloud

AVEVA Point Cloud Manager 4.4.2 and later offers a new way to view and interact with 3D laser data, which is called the Solid Point Cloud. This new point rendering technique offers immediate clarity without the need to select regions of interest to view in high detail. The Solid Point Cloud consequently offers significant benefits to a user wishing to quickly navigate through the scene, as the view appears more ‘solid’ at the outset and when moving. The Solid Point Cloud is available directly in the SPR environment for convincing immersive design reviews with ‘as-operated’ laser scanned conditions.

One important feature of this view format is that more 3D capture devices can be fully supported. BubbleView and HyperBubble resources can only be produced from static terrestrial scans, which has presented a challenge to users wishing to utilise a variety of capture devices on a project, without losing the visual clarity that they have been accustomed to. With the introduction of the Solid Point Cloud, all mobile devices can contribute data to this new visual format (hand-held, vehicle based, airborne & static).

For information on how to produce Solid Point Cloud Resources, please refer to HyperBubble and Solid Point Cloud Creation and Use.

Graphical Requirements

Solid Point Cloud rendering requires a reasonably powerful graphics card with the very latest drivers. It has been developed using NVidia graphics cards, and Point Cloud Manager recommends using these where possible for optimum performance and reliability.

Do not rely on Windows graphics driver properties to update to the latest version, instead use the NVidia tools. Visit https://www.nvidia.com/download/index.aspx?lang=en-us to obtain the latest version.

The supported OpenGL version information is saved in the Point Cloud Manager log file on start-up which can be found in the Temp folder as shown below which reports v4.5. The minimum needed is v4.3.

• 12: GL Major version supported: 4 115

• 13: GL Minor version supported: 5 127

Updated graphics drivers may be needed to meet the OpenGL requirement.

Viewing Solid Point Cloud Data

Select the Solid Point Cloud button to show Solid Point Cloud data in the 3D view in place of the 3D points.

The SPR view will now display Solid Point Cloud data. Users can navigate freely around the SPR model with the Solid Point Cloud overlaid through the normal SPR flying tools.