Recap does not export unstructured e57 file

[mika_jahkola]

When trying to export a registered point cloud as e57 Recap gives you two options to choose from:

complete: includes per-scan info (no edits)

3d-only: includes all edits (unstructured)

No matter which option you choose, Recap will always export the "complete" point cloud. There seems to be no way to force Recap to export an unstructured e57 point cloud. Unstructured rcs and rcp point clouds can be exported.

The procuct version is 23.0.1.271.

--edit: I updated the product to the newest version 24.1.0.312 and the problem was still there.

[barmanr · Accepted solution]

Hi @mika_jahkola ,

Are you referring to the fact that exporting E57 as the 3D-only option will unify the point cloud? If Yes, then you are correct, currently exporting the E57 as 3D-only would mean you will not get the RealViews anymore and will include all edits for example if you clipped the point cloud before exporting. However, the scans will not be unified.

Am I correct in understanding if this is what you mean? 

Otherwise, I just gave a quick test, and exporting as E57 with 3D-only option becomes unstructured with no real views but with all the scans intact and not unified.

Thanking You.

Warmest Regards,

[mika_jahkola · Accepted solution]

Thank you Rishov, you are correct.

I was misled by the caption text (see screenshot) to think exporting to e57 would yield a unified (single scan) file.

Below some technical details:

I compared two e57 files exported with "3d-only" and "complete" options in Cloudcompare.

The difference between the files seems to be that the "complete" file has a structure for each scan called  indexBounds, which is missing in "3d-only", and it stores every point in a row/column matrix even if some points are  all zeroes (no measured result), so this is a structured point cloud.

"3d-only" file does not have the points of each scan arranged in a matrix with fixed number of rows and columns, but it contains a variable number of points per scan. Obviously it only has  points that have been actually measured and were not clipped away in Recap. However, the points of each scan are still held in separate structures under the data3D vector, meaning that the scans can be viewed separately, That makes the "3d-only" file slightly smaller than the "complete" file but it is not a unified point cloud.