Point cloud to dxf conversion

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Ross BDLS
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Point cloud to dxf conversion

Post by Ross BDLS »

Hello.
I have an up coming job and the client has requested the scan data as a dxf for use in Tekla.

Doing a trial on a small 3 scan test project and converting straight from Scene 6.24 the dxf was very clunky to use in Autocad and would freeze for minutes while rotating.
So I did another trial, exporting point cloud from Scene 6.24 to Recap and converted to dxf from there. The file size was 373 KB compared to 182,612 KB from the Scene conversion. The dxf created in Recap worked well in Autocad.

So my question is has any one else had issues with converting to a usable dxf from Scene, and can anyone suggest alternative workflows or confirm converting from Recap is a good option.

I intend to do another trial on a large project so this could save me a lot of time.

Thanks.
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Re: Point cloud to dxf conversion

Post by Ross BDLS »

Apologies for posting in the wrong section.
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Oliver Buerkler
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Re: Point cloud to dxf conversion

Post by Oliver Buerkler »

Hi Ross.

What would you like the DXF of point clouds to be used for?
Due to the structure of DXF files, like are mostly not the best choice to store point cloud data.

I would assume that your test in AutoCAD was only for testing purpose. Otherwise using the ReCap point cloud would sound more straight foreward to me.

I case you would like to use the data in CAD systems without the ability to handle point clouds, you might want to try Orthophotos generated from SCENE instead.

Best regards,
Oliver Bürkler
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Ross BDLS
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Re: Point cloud to dxf conversion

Post by Ross BDLS »

Hi Oliver,
Thanks for your reply.
The point cloud will be used by my client to do a steel portal frame building extension. He has used dxf files with Tekla to do this kind of project previously with success.

Opening the dxf in AutoCAD was just to test the results and this is not a workflow I use myself.

I am not familiar with Orthophotos but I will look in to it, so thanks for the tip.

Best Regards

Ross
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Re: Point cloud to dxf conversion

Post by Scott »

http://www.lidarmag.com/content/view/12233/
This sounds quite similar to your problem:
Data to support the design of the façade steel work was collected by Swanton’s Testing and Monitoring division using a Leica ScanStation laser scanner. Originally, the vast point cloud was imported into the 3D construction modeling software Tekla Structures, produced by Trimble. The 1.5 Gb DXF CAD file, comprising more the six million cross hair points, then took the best part of two weeks to process into a usable model onto which the steel structure framework could be positioned.
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Re: Point cloud to dxf conversion

Post by Ross BDLS »

Hi Scott,
That's an interesting read.
I actually trialed Pointfuse about 6 months ago but I couldn't get the results I needed for Engineering.
Might be worth another look now that they have V2.

Best regards
Ross
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Re: Point cloud to dxf conversion

Post by Olumide Enoch »

Quite surprising that Recap can export a huge amount of points to just 373kb in .dxf!

Perhaps you may find this interesting, I wrote a free java application that converts laser scans to a .dxf file format.

Take a look at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/laser-sc ... -igbiloba/
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Re: Point cloud to dxf conversion

Post by Scott »

Olumide Enoch wrote: Sat Oct 07, 2017 4:36 pm Quite surprising that Recap can export a huge amount of points to just 373kb in .dxf!

Perhaps you may find this interesting, I wrote a free java application that converts laser scans to a .dxf file format.

Take a look at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/laser-sc ... -igbiloba/
Nice work and write-up - thank you!
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Re: Point cloud to dxf conversion

Post by 3DForensics »

Unless you have smaller point clouds, then I can't see how useful a dxf file can be when you have hundreds of millions of points. Maybe you can select the most important portions of the scans and filter them in CloudCompare to keep the density where you need it. This should really optimize your data before you convert it and avoid unnecessary "weight".

Cheers,

Eugene
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