CloudCompare forum

Hi I'm newbie obviously!
I would like to process a mesh from Kreon scanner, make it smooth for Reverse engineering, so not to lose too much accuracy.
Why are the options under Clean/SOR and Noise greyed out? And what settings would be best as to not lose too much detail, but smooth at the same time?
Thanks!

Because CC is not a 'mesh' tool so most of its methods are for point clouds :D.

But you could use the 'clean' methods on the vertices and try to remesh them afterwards (with Poisson). Or maybe take a look at options in Meshlab?

Cl0ud99,

Can I ask what application you are using to do the reverse engineering? If it will be rebuilt using a manual method, the mesh quality may not be an issue.

Thank you for your responses.
As far as I know, this is a point cloud directly from the scanner. I am using the scanner for reverse engineering, but I don't have Geomagic or Polyworks.I would like to be able to do an accurate clean up of the point cloud or mesh, so that I can use Rhino to cut sections and start surfacing from those.
For example, this attachment is a glass cube, so its scan should also be smooth, but its quite rough. How do I go from rough to smooth?

I think Meshlab will be a better choice to work with the scan, since it gives some additional tools for generating a surface from a point cloud.

Unfortunately Meshlab is not an easy application to use. I find there's a lot of trial and error with the various settings and although there is some explanation with tooltips, sometimes I find I'm still guessing as to what values to enter.

I would not spend a lot of time trying to get a nice looking mesh. If you are creating new curves, you need only enough of the surface to use as a reference, so holes are OK. Reducing noise is helpful to some extent, but at some point you may loose the accuracy of the reference if the noise reduction is excessive.

I typically use Geomagic, and have used Meshlab occasionally.

I hear what you seay about cleaning the mesh up too much, as it interferes with the accuracy.

Obviously programs like GeoMagic and Polyworks are geared toward being able to orcess meshes with more control and accuracy.
If you had to compare Geomagic to Polyworks, obviously you prefer Geomagic, but may I ask what made you choose Geo. I have to make the big deicsion as to which one to buy, so I need to look carefully!

Also, I was amazed to discover (looks like) fully professional, capable FREE Inspection program called GOM Inspect, and I was really hoping there would be something similar to Geomagic free!

Sadly nothing is free ;). All pieces of software have a price. It's just the way they are financed that changes (and how greedy people are of course ;). If people or companies didn't contribute (or pay others to contribute) to CloudCompare or other open sources projects, then nothing would exist.

GOM Inspect may be free, but it's also a marketing tool for GOM... I bet they put some money in it :D.

Geomagic was my first experience with surfacing point clouds. (I purchased it bundled with a Microscribe digitizer arm back in '98). I was not able to maintain the upgrades due to other expenses. Fortunately I have been supplied with a license for a 2014 version to do scanning with a Faro Arm with laser.

Aside from Meshlab, I don't have experience with other point cloud surfacing applications.