I'm working with CloudCompare 2.11 in command line mode, and I'm trying to merge several ".e57" point clouds obtained by different scanning stations, however, when I do so in the command line, only one station is kept.
Yes the loss of Sensors in command line mode is annoying. Also not working for e57 files that contain multiple clouds (e.g. TLS data) in command line mode is:
- Generating scalar field with original cloud index when merging, and
- Global shift using Auto or First mode doesn't apply the same shift to all clouds in the e57.
Output export format (clouds) set to: E57
[LOADING]
Opening file: '.\cloud1.e57'
[E57] 'formatName' - ASTM E57 3D Imaging Data File
[E57] 'guid' - {d050c58d-19c7-446c-b683-b2600278b1ec}
[E57] 'versionMajor' - 1 (INTEGER)
[E57] 'versionMinor' - 0 (INTEGER)
[E57] Reading new scan node (0)
[E57] Internal description: Created by CloudCompare v2.11 beta (Anoia)
[E57] Reading new image node (0)
[E57] Reading new image node (1)
[E57] Reading new image node (2)
[E57] Reading new image node (3)
[E57] Reading new image node (4)
[E57] Reading new image node (5)
[I/O] File '.\cloud1.e57' loaded successfully
Found one cloud with 11590516 points
[LOADING]
Opening file: '.\cloud2.e57'
[E57] 'formatName' - ASTM E57 3D Imaging Data File
[E57] 'guid' - {9538a8d5-48b5-482f-a2fb-2d9f33091871}
[E57] 'versionMajor' - 1 (INTEGER)
[E57] 'versionMinor' - 0 (INTEGER)
[E57] Reading new scan node (0)
[E57] Internal description: Created by CloudCompare v2.11 beta (Anoia)
[E57] Reading new image node (0)
[E57] Reading new image node (1)
[E57] Reading new image node (2)
[E57] Reading new image node (3)
[E57] Reading new image node (4)
[E57] Reading new image node (5)
[I/O] File '.\cloud2.e57' loaded successfully
Found one cloud with 11624440 points
Auto-save is disabled
[MERGE CLOUDS]
[SAVING]
[I/O] File './/merge_cloud.e57' saved successfully
Processed finished in 35.23 s.
I forgot to mention that the images are well merged.
And for the station, it appears that pretty much all informations (box center, matrix, axis/angle ...) are taken from the station from the first point cloud except for the local box dimension which as a new value not present in any other stations.
If you merge the clouds, then indeed, only the meta-data associated to the first cloud are kept (we wouldn't know what to do with the others in the way things are implemented - there's only one set stored per cloud). Otherwise you shouldn't merge them (the scans will still be saved all in one cloud if you use the 'ALL_AT_ONCE' option).
And in your resulting E57 file, how many points do you get in the (unique) scan?