Segmenting photogrammetric point cloud from drone

[Anonymous]

Hello everyone,

I extracted some photogrammetric point clouds from drone surveys, they are correctly georeferenced with GPS/total station and they are produced with Agisoft Photoscan.

I'm trying to import these point clouds in Autocad 2016 to extract plans and sections but I cannot use the new features about the point clouds snaps.

I can only snap to a point cloud point. I cannot use edge, vertex and plane snaps.

Before attaching the point cloud to my .dwg, I import the point cloud in Recap in .las or .e57, then save in .rcp.

How do I segment that point cloud? Do I need Recap Pro?

Can this be done in others software like Cloud Compare or Meshlab?

Thank you.

[anil_mistry · Accepted solution]

Hi @Anonymous,

ReCap segments the point data from structured scan only. Structured scans are "fixed-origin" or tripod scans - data coming from scanners on a tripod (static or terrestrial scanners). For example, formats like FLS,ZFS,PTX etc.

.LAS and some .E57 files that you are working with fall under unstructured. 

More info on structured vs unstructured can be seen at this article.

As far as I know, there is no software to convert unstructured data to structured.

Please, let me know it this helps.

Please select the Accept as Solution button if my post solves your issue or answers your question.

[Anonymous]

@anil_mistry

I can't read the article that you shared to me. The website tells me that I don't have privileges to access this page. 

I agree, as far as I know, unstructured data cannot be processed in structured data but I was thinking that would be cool if Autodesk could implement these kind of functions. I don't really know the way to do it but an unstructured point cloud still has coordinates and Recap and Autocad can see which points have in common a normal to the point. So maybe a "build plane" tool based on the arithmetic coordinates average of an high number of point could pull off a rough plane. If that is possible you could also implement "extract vertex or edge" by intersecting 2 rough planes.

I'm not saying that's easy, It was only a kind of brainstorming. 😄

By the way, thank you for the reply. 

[anil_mistry]

Hi @Anonymous,

Sorry about that. I will find out what's wrong with that article link. 

Thank you so much for your feedback. This is an enhancement request and if you have any feedback that you would like to submit regarding any enhancement, please click on the “ReCap IdeaStation” link on the ReCap community home page.  This will help the Project Manager and developers hear your voice on any changes/concerns with functionality directly for consideration in future builds.

Thank you and have a great day!!!

Please select the Accept as Solution button if my post solves your issue or answers your question.