Point Cloud Tools

[Anonymous]

My design work increasingly involves working with point clouds. I love how well Recap point clouds view in Inventor; I use it frequently for modeling assets from the point cloud. However, AutoCAD has a much better set of tools for managing point cloud data. I find myself having to bounce between AutoCAD and Inventor in order to execute my work and communicate with others effectively. 

I would be super super ecstatic if Inventor included the exact same point cloud functionality as AutoCAD. Ability to apply different color maps, ability to save crop states, transparency, point size....etc.  

[admaiora]

It would be great to improve, in general all the cloud point tab, in the specific, for example adding control on display colors (elevation, perpendicularity, intensity, regions, etc).

[dgorsman]

I'd love to be able to bring the settings from an RCP, so it doesn't have to be set individually for each program.

[a.knoke]

I would like to use the high-defined scandata that our Faro-Arm generates with its software Cam2Measure in Inventor 2016. I want to be able to make a comparison between existing raw castings and the ready machined part made of the castings. Also this method should give me the possibility to help finding out what is the perfect positioning on the milling machine for a complex casting, that maybe doesn`t fit 100% to it`s theoretical shape. There already exists a way to proceed as described above. But it doesn`t work for me.

- Scan Objects (for example raw castings) with a Faro Edge HD (arm with additional laser head) usings Faros own software Cam2Measure 10.7

- export the registered pointcloud as an .stl-file

- open the .stl in Inventor (with activated official Autodesk tool "Mesh Enabler"

- select the mesh feature in the .ipt that features the pointcloud geometry and chose convert to solid, delete original (mesh)

- .... after more than 72 hours my very powerful workstation still works on that task (one core with100% cpu usage, about 12 GB RAM usage) without any results.

I tried to export the .stl with reduced resolution but nothing changes. Other users used the mesh enabler without problems (assumed they were able to activate the addin in Inventor).

[hugo.trepanier]

Sure! We need better tools inside Inventor to manage point cloud. Like Autocad or better (save crop, color etc). Also it could be interesting to see point cloud inside drawing view with an Inventor drawing!

[scallipari]

Inventor needs at min the same set of Point Cloud tools that is available in AuotCAD. Just having ability to be able to change the colour of the point cloud would be a massive help, because everything is black it is very hard to work with if the PC density at max it is very hard to make out objects and to be able to view in a drawing would save so much time.

[cheryl_sneddon]

I would love to see more tools for point clouds.... there are products out there like Geomagic that can produce solid models from point cloud data (quickly, without producing planes and points all over the place), I also think that Geomagic have an add in for Solidworks.

I am not bashing the product at all, I love the Autodesk products but I do spend a lot of time firefighting to keep users interested in using the products when a workflow is only half way there....

Using the mesh to object in Recap can be useful for smaller objects but what if we need to model more than one object in proximity?

I am keeping my fingers crossed 🙂

[JMR_Work]

I agree with most of the above comments.  Inventor Point Cloud support is weak.  We are finding more often that loading point clouds into Inventor is disappointing when you attempt most downstream functions.  Sadly other 3rd party tools provide much more robust point cloud ability.

Currently I have 2 RCP point clouds loaded into an Inventor IAM file so I can merge them into one view.  (I'm using Inventor because we need to eventually pull some solid models off this layout)  I can see the PCs myself in my local Inventor session, able to orbit and zoom in and out with ease.  However I cannot find any way to share this visual data AT ALL.  You can't DWF export it, you can't 3D-PDF it, you can't "Share View" it...etc.  The Autodesk Viewer doesn't display anything either.  I even tried loading the IAM into Navisworks, and the result is an empty import.  There appears to be no way to share a 3d orbit enabled view of a point cloud with someone using current Autodesk tools.

[Anonymous]

Good to see some people commenting. Agreed, The tools here are limited. 1-The pick box. I think this tool works great but the fact that you can't save clipping presets makes it time comusiming. This would be an easy thing to add. 2-Points should have an option to be selectable. No need to add a point to a point if your are gonna use 3d sketches or splines or even when sketching on a 2d plane

3-Color defenition Like on recap, should have the option of RGB ,intensity etc. Could not figure out to display recap color presets when imported to inventor.

My persnal opinion.

Giving the 3d architecture of inventor, pointcloud seems to me a bit smother and even more readable to an extend that is limited by the simplisity of the tools currently avaliable

Scanner technologies will only become more common for many reasons. The earlier this things are implemeted the better.

Ps: I dont want any magic add on to model for me. This takes all the fun!

[damien]

Agree, Same tool set as autocad would be great and especially be able to be able to have multiple Crop Boxes and be able to save them as a minimum.

[mfurches]

Hard to believe they would have even added the point cloud functionality if they weren't going to provide basic tools to use it effectively.

[Stuart.FowlerW85LG]

Agreed, compared to the functionality of point clouds in AutoCAD, Inventor is very limited. 

AutoCAD will pull through point cloud regions created in Recap, and allow you to toggle their visibility on and off.

If Inventor could do this, along with changing the view style of the point clouds it would greatly improve functionality.

[damien]

Hi Stuart,

Thanks for the response and agree, just as a FYI for you, if you select the point cloud in the browser and right click, you can select the 'Point Cloud Manager' which will open a window and give you the options to select your regions. Toggle the light bulb to turn on and off. Just a note on creating regions, the idea is good, but onlarger point clouds the regions if to large will dramatically slow down inventor once attached.

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[Stuart.FowlerW85LG]

Hi Damien,

Many thanks for your reply.

Are you saying the point cloud manager where you can show and hide regions is available in Inventor? I have used it in AutoCad but haven't seen it in Inventor. We're still running 2021 so maybe that's the issue.

Cheers,

Stuart

[joshua.abreu]

The tools i would like to to see the most are, undone crop box, save specific crops for point could, centerline for pipe, and beams, and point clouds in drawings.  

[rpaquinUE26U]

Many great suggestions here. I was just about to add the idea to be able to save cropped models. Having a single scan file with different "view representations" would be good. I find myself making new parts with the scan in , cropped differently, as a work around. Just like a beginner who does not know the view representations. 

[allan5]

Yes please, we need more support for point clouds.

I am currently looking at moving to SolidWorks unless I can see there is some effort to make point clouds more usable in the future in Inventor.

[bjj]

We need point cloud tools and visibility in presentation and especially in drawings

The point clouds are being used more and more, Can't we soon get the tools that are at least in AutoCAD into Inventor and then you can always build on from there'

Thanks 

[jbm]

We really need to show our inventor model together with point cloud on the idw and being able to create sections.

As supplier to a building owner we have no interest ind creation a solid model of the point cloud, only used for space management for all sorts of equipment.

Now we need to use Autocad for 2D representations.

[penNCG5H]

Yes please, that would be very much appreciated.

[mgrenier2]

Yup..., The ability to make the point cloud Active or not would also be nice so the cursor doesn't snap to every single point in it when you're trying to select something that overlaps.