Creating topography in Revit from point cloud (.rcs) from Recap

[shershahbacha9]

Hello,

I have a Point Cloud of a site model in a ReCap as (.rcs) as shown in attached screenshot. Basically, I wanna generate a topography in Autodesk Revit from it. I saw a method using Civil 3D but honestly i trust this Group and believe that it has more experienced People. 

[barthbradley]

Why don't you do it in Civil first, and insert the DWG into Revit and create a Toposurface from the DWG?  

[ToanDN]

Create the topo from the pointcloud in Civil3D, export to a point file (CSV) and create the topo in Revit from that point file.

[shershahbacha9]

i will definitely give its a try but actually i was thuinking if there could be other better options.

[shershahbacha9]

i will definitely give its a try but actually i was thuinking if there could be other better options. Thanks

[barthbradley]

What's wrong with those options? We use both all the time.  

[shershahbacha9]

There is nothing wrong. Actually i saw a vedio about it but i needed to make sure whether is there any better option or not. But now it seems that this Civil 3D is a better option.

[barthbradley]

Yes, I too would trust an AutoCAD file. Maybe that trust is ill placed.  Guess we'll find out soon enough. Won't we? 

[shershahbacha9]

Actually you are right. lets see

[LyleHardin]

I find it a shame we can't just create a topo in Revit by adding points (Place Point command) snapping to the point cloud. Trying this just results in a bunch of points flat on the current Level, which makes sense in a Revit kind of way, but I think placing Points within the TopoSurface tool should enable 3D snapping regardless of level. Or, let us do it in a 3D view without associating a reference plane or level to the points.

I will go ahead and do this, though, then cut a section across my fresh grid of points and move the corners of the topo triangle up or down to fit the point cloud, then move the section and repeat. Not a bad workaround for a small area or a topo of 100 points or so.

[lucdoucet_msdl]

@shershahbacha9 

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I have a Point Cloud of a site model in a ReCap as (.rcs) as shown in attached screenshot. Basically, I wanna generate a topography in Autodesk Revit from it.

---

You can do this as a two step process:

1. In Recap:
   1. edit the point cloud data to remove all non-topography related points;
   2. decimate the point cloud density to the desired number of points;
   3. save the point file to purge all deleted points;
   4. export the point file to an XYZ format.
2. In Revit:
   1. create the toposurface from the XYZ file using this method:
      Create a Toposurface with a Points File

This said, I agree with @ToanDN and @barthbradley that Civil 3D's point cloud processing is an easier and more reliable way to the generate the topography. You can also simplify the Civil surface and add points on features to better control things like vertical features (retaining walls, curbs, valleys, etc).

Hope this helps,

-luc

[rutarinkule89]

@lucdoucet_msdl

Hi!
How to do step 4 :

export the point file to an XYZ format ?

ReCap Pro allows to export - .rcp .rcs .pts .e57

[GAlakaPM96Y]

I am having the same thought right now. Why can't I just 3D snap to the point cloud and Revit will automatically know what height i'm picking, instead of me defining a height and then selecting a point (defeats the purpose). I am using Revit 2023. Has this been updated in Revit 2024 or later versions?

[LyleHardin]

I believe exporting to .pts results in an ascii file that is xyz format.

[GAlakaPM96Y]

The .pts file ended up being useless for Revit as it's looking for a .csv file or a mesh (3D dwg).

I ended up doing the following:

1. Export a thin slice of the lidar scan from Recap as a .pts file (remove all the stuff you don't need and only keep the topography).
2. Import the .pts file into CloudCompare (it's a open source software that's free).
3. Within CloudCompare, you need to simplify the point cloud model, so that you don't have a million points. I ended up reducing the point cloud by 99%. Here's a short video I saw about this process. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ46xMxvoSI
4. From CloudCompare, you can save the new reduced point cloud as a .csv file. There's no export button, but it's rather a "save" of the new point cloud.  When creating the .csv file, make sure to change one of the dropdowns to "comma".
5. In Revit, you create topography from that .csv file and that's it!

It was quite a roller coaster yesterday until I figured it out, but it works great!

Hope this helps.