3DR - Suggestions for improvements

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Rom-Geolab
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3DR - Suggestions for improvements

Post by Rom-Geolab »

Hi there,

We recently bought a license of 3DR Pro Edition and have used it extensively over the last few months. It’s an awesome software and we do not regret choosing it a single second.

In order to make it even better, here is a list of suggested improvements, bugs to fix and features that would be great to add.

Our maintenance subscription has expired (stuck at v2021.1.6) and I’m not sure we are going to extend it so we will probably not benefit from these improvements anytime soon. But anyway, I think it is worth sharing especially as 3DR developers are on this forum.



IMPROVEMENTS


UI - RENDERING

1. Improve the pointcloud rendering engine. Personally, I think Pix4Dmapper (not Pix4D Cloud or Pix4Dsurvey, Pix4Dmatic…) is the best at rendering pointclouds thanks to two features:
a. When zooming in the pointcloud, the point size increases, leaving no big blanks between points

Pix4Dmapper :
Zoomed out
Image
Zoomed in
Image

3DR :
Zoomed out
Image
Zoomed in
Image

In 3DR, it is much harder to tell what it is, because you can see through the points and they are very small. You always have to play with the point size when zooming in and out to understand what you are looking at.

b. The size of the points decreases with the distance to the camera.
Pix4Dmapper :
Image
3DR :
Image

In the distance, in Pix4D you can tell that the green points are palm trees and that they are far away from the digger because the points are very small. On the other hand, in 3DR you cannot tell what these points are because they are too big and stack on top of each other. And you cannot tell if these points are far or close because they have the same size as the digger in front of the view. It is then much harder to do manual cleaning of the pointcloud.

If I remember well this point size variable to the distance is also a display option in Quick Terrain Modeler called “Voxel” or something like that. However, it works much better in Pix4Dmapper.
---

2.When working with a big pointcloud or with a small pointcloud but with another big object (i.e. a polyline or another pointcloud) displayed, and you want to rotate a small view of the pointcloud you are working on, if you don’t click exactly on a point of this pointcloud, the pivot point (the rotating sphere) is set far away behind the pointcloud. And then a slight move of your mouse moves the pointcloud very fast as they (the pivot point and the pointcloud) are far from each other and you completely lose what you were looking at.
The pivot point could virtually snap to the nearest point of the pointcloud instead of setting far away if you miss a point. This would be a great improvement as the current pivot point selection is very frustrating and results in a great loss of time. I suggest you to try the pivot point of Pix4Dmapper again, it works like a charm. (This is a much needed improvement according to me).
---

3. Ability to change the field of view angle of the camera of the main window (and also for the camera scenario).
---

4. Display the XYZ coordinates of the mouse pointer all the time at a corner of the screen without having to activate the measurement tool (see: Pix4Dmapper at the bottom right corner).
---

5. In the properties tab, add thousand separators (e.g., space) of all the numbers for clarity.
---

6. Improve the visibility of lines at edge of meshes. Sometimes the line and the mesh are mixed together and we cannot clearly see the line.
---

7. Add a backface culling or transparency option for meshes. Very useful to see trough closed meshes (e.g. of a scanned room).
---

8. Add the possibility to rename multiple layers at once when more than one is selected and add a suffix number automatically (similar to windows renaming).
---

9. Add the ability to fully reorder the layers in the tree view.

---------



IMPORTS & EXPORTS

1. Ability to Import geotif and ecw images.
---

2. Exported Laz and e57 files are much heavier than when exported from CloudCompare.
After exported from 3DR, I sometime have to import and export the file in CloudCompare, just to save space on my computer (acting like a compression software).
---

3. When exporting an obj mesh with a jpg texture, do not split the JPG in tiles, or at least, make it an option.

---------



EDITION TOOLS

1. Offset tool:
When offsetting a line where all vertices have different Z, the result is generally not good. I always have to export the line and use the buffer tool of Global Mapper which yields much better results and then import the line back in 3DR.
---

2. Translation :
Decompose the tool for each coordinate to be able to translate in Y, Y and Z at once (for example : +200 in X and -300 in Z).
---

3. Compare Inspect :
After inspecting a point cloud (e.g. Cloud to Mesh), keep the real color of the original point cloud in the resulting point cloud (much needed !).
---

4. Cloud Sampling - Resample :
The density of the remaining points is not regular, it kind of creates contour lines with higher densities.
Image
CloudCompare performs much better, the density of the result point cloud is homogeneous. I always have to do my subsampling in CloudCompare.
---

5. Cloud Sampling - Reduce :
Improve the detection of areas of interest resulting in low point densities in flat areas and higher densities where the relief changes.
It seems to me that FME Desktop does a better job a keeping the best points.
---

6. Clean/Separate clouds :
When you create a selection of points, it takes 1 or 2 seconds to select the points and highlight them in pink. If you hit Ctrl+Delete in those 1-2 sec, the action is not performed. When you have many edits to do, you can lose quite some time. It would be great if 3DR records the action given during those seconds and performs it right when the selection is ready.
---

7. Separate according Distance :
- Allow this tool to be used with multiple lines at once (and not one line by one line).
- Allow to give a direction of the distance. Currently it is only a 3D distance but it would be great to be able to select base on a plane (e.g. Z direction i.e. XY plane).
---

8. Keep point size when cleaning by color after each step.
---

9. Cloud Automatic Segmentation – Real Colors :
- Do not reset the point size after each time we click “Ok, Next”
- Give the choice to keep either the “Extracted Points” or the “Other Points” to continue segmenting after “Ok, Next”
- Add a panel with all the previously extracted points to Delete, Keep, Split in the Real Colors tool itself, similar to what is possible in the Clean/Separate tool.
---

10. Add the possibility to give a name of the output of every tool. Sometime the name of the original pointcloud is kept in the name of the output in the treeview, but sometimes not (e.g. wit the Split Ground Points). Then it is sometime very difficult to remember from which pointcloud the output are derived from at a later stage.
---

11. Cut Polyline :
When you want to cut a polyline at the intersection with another polyline, the cut tool does not work well. Sometimes, it believes you are clicking on the other polyline (that you don't want to cut) and then nothing happens. You have to rotate the view to find the right angle to be able to cut the polyline you want.
---



**********



BUGS


1. 4K display :
The window of 3DR is randomly reduced at half my screen when working the right side of my 4K screen (not related to a specific action or tool). Only experienced in version 2021.1.6
---

2. Extract – Object - Polyline – Draw :
When creating a polyline, the tree view freezes and it too big. I cannot enable/disable layers (maybe due to the 4K resolution of my screen ?)
---

3. Display bug when objects from 2 distant coordinate systems are displayed. Everything is flickering when moving the camera.
---

4. Polyline Edition – Edit Polyline :
When editing polyline vertices, they do not snap correctly to points of the poinclouds (very annoying, maybe due to long coordinates?).
---

5. Texture from Images :
Sometimes, some triangles from the mesh are not textured.
---

6. Translation of an image :
The image disappears when translated along the Z axis (sometimes useful when working around see level and you don’t want to have the image at the same level as the other elements of the project).
---

7. Import of DWG :
Some lines are not imported correctly. The Z of some vertices is not correct (I can provide the DWG on request).
---

8. Constraint Mesh :
The mesh coming from polylines and multiple points or pointclouds is completely wrong. I have to merge all the points and point clouds before generating the mesh to get the right mesh. This is quite annoying because I don’t always want to merge the pointclouds.
---

9. Object - Points on Grid :
I have experienced very weird results with this tool. Sometimes the lowest points extracted are lower than any point in the original point cloud.
---




**********




SUGGESTIONS/REQUESTED FEATURES


1. Add a good cross section tool like the one from Geomedia Covadis, with customizable axes:
Image
---

2. Ability to select and delete individual points of a pointcloud :
For example, when you want to delete only one point of the point cloud, you could double click on it, it would be selected (and not launch the Edit color of the whole pointcloud) and then you could hit delete to delete just this point.
---

3. Ability to import shapefile (given that they are in the same coordinate system as the other elements of the project).
---

4. Clean/Separate clouds :
At the bottom where all the selection tools are, add a possibility so select a closed polyline, to select the points (similar to the Separate on Both Sides tool)
---

5. Slider comparison tool, to easily compare 2 pointclouds or meshes.
---

6. Add the most used tools in the right click context menu.
For example, when right clicking a point cloud, we could have access to the Clean/Separate tool in the menu and for a polyline, the Edit Polyline tool.
---

7. Ability to display and customize the unit of labels.
---

8. Colorize a poincloud based on an image.
---

9. Cut a mesh with another open mesh or geometry (e.g. a cylinder), without having to find the intersection polyline and then cut the mesh with this intersection polyline (does not always work).
---

10. Ability to lock layers in the tree view to prevent their selection when selecting others objects in the main view.
---

11. Add a transparency option for pointclouds.
---

12. Ability to work with additional fields of pointclouds (e.g. confidence level of Metashape pointclouds or normal of CloudCompare pointclouds). Similar to the Scalar fields of CloudCompare.
---

13. When analyzing a pointcloud, add the results to the original pointcloud as a new attribute and representation option, instead of creating a completely new pointcloud.
---

14. When merging points or pointclouds, keep an attribute information of the name of their original tree view name to be able to split it again based on the name at a later stage.
---

15. Cut polylines with an overlapping polyline given a direction (e.g. Z axis).
---

16. Double clicking a polyline could enable editing it (launching the Edit Polyline tool).
---

17. Allow more options to configure the mouse boutons behavior (currently there are only two predefined sets of actions: Cyclone 3DR or 3DReshaper). It would be great if we could configure each button individually.
---

18. Support 3Dconnection Spacemouses
---

19. Add the ability to create keyboard shortcuts to launch specific tools
---

20. When using split view:
- add an option to sync the camera movements between the views.
- add a tree view panel for each splitted view to enable to display different layers than in the other views.
---

21. Show the vertices of multiple selected lines at once (and not one by one).
---

22. The Free Move tool is really cumbersome. When you want to drag an axis or grab an arrow in front of you, you often end up selecting the sphere to rotate.
Moreover, there should be an undo and a reset button next to OK and Cancel.
---

23. Clean/Separate clouds :
When splitting a pointcloud in multiple parts, you can right click on the parts to Rename or Merge them. It would be great if we could also delete the part in this right click menu.
---

24. Offset :
Add the ability to chose to offset a line at it’s right or left side of the given direction (the + ou – doesn’t change anything currently).
---

25. Ability to set all the vertices of a polyline to a given elevation (e.g. 0 or 10m), similar to the flatten command in AutoCAD, without having to create a plane at this elevation and the project the line to this plane (my current method).
Same for a selection of points or a pointcloud.
---

26. Cloud Sampling - Resample :
Add an option to keep the original pointcloud.
Same for the Reduce tool.
---

27. Object - Points on Grid :
Add an option to extract Mid Point in addition to the Lowest and highest (and Ground) point. If I remember well, Cloudworx for AutoCAD has this feature.
---

28. When a tool request to give a direction (e.g. Offset), hitting the X, Y ou Z key of the keyboard could select this direction for the plane, instead of having to click on the button at the bottom of the screen.



**********




That's all for now :)

Please let me know if some points are not clear and need more explanation.

Keep up the good work developing this great software!
Last edited by Rom-Geolab on Fri Jan 28, 2022 12:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Yannick_Cyclone3DR
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Re: 3DR - Suggestions for improvements

Post by Yannick_Cyclone3DR »

Hi Geolab team !

Thank you SSSOOO much for this amazing list of feedbacks !!! We will definitely do a deep investigation of all the topics and I think we should directly get in touch to discuss them. What do you think?

Yannick
Cyclone 3DR Product Manager
[email protected]
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Re: 3DR - Suggestions for improvements

Post by sim.herrod »

4. Display the XYZ coordinates of the mouse pointer all the time at a corner of the screen without having to activate the measurement tool (see: Pix4Dmapper at the bottom right corner).
9. Add the ability to fully reorder the layers in the tree view.
Just these two would make me a happy user.

The rest will require more coffee before I can do the list justice.
Rom-Geolab
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Re: 3DR - Suggestions for improvements

Post by Rom-Geolab »

Hi Yannick,

Thanks for you quick reply.
Of course, let's get in touch to discuss them !
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Re: 3DR - Suggestions for improvements

Post by mrhunt »

I'd like to add the suggestion of having the ability to change the degree orientation to clockwise in the tank module and the option to remove the percentage line in the color map bar.
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Re: 3DR - Suggestions for improvements

Post by Nicolas L »

Hello
You can define the orientation in the verticality analysis.
From the 2021.1.0., you can display or hide the distribution line in Edit Colors.
Regards
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Re: 3DR - Suggestions for improvements

Post by mrhunt »

Can you define the angles as clockwise in the unroll and roundness sections?
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Re: 3DR - Suggestions for improvements

Post by Nicolas L »

In the roundness analysis, the deviation values are stored so that the first point of each section is located near the orientation marker, and values follow each other in clockwise direction by default. In the unroll command, the default orientation is clockwise.
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