CloudCompare forum

is there a way to filter points by their original distance from the scanner?
For example:
Faro Focus S series Laser scanner:
5 Scan locations scanned.
5 Scans registered into a single point cloud in Leica Register 360
Export the scans from Register 360 as E57 files

E57 can be managed in Cloud compare for subsampling and points removal etc

Not I want to be able to delete all points from the point cloud that were further than say 30 meters from the scanner.

I know Surphaser software has a filter to allow this for their scans, but am wondering if there is a way to do this in cloud compare.


Paul

You can indeed compute the distances from a 'sensor'. Either the sensor has been imported automatically from the file, or you can create a fake one if you know the position of the sensor relatively to the cloud (use 'Edit > Sensors > TLS/GBL > Create', then set the right center position, and leave the other parameters to their default values as they won't be used).

Then select the sensor in the DB tree, and use 'Edit > Sensors > Compute Ranges'.

Eventually you can use 'Edit > Scalar fields > Filter by value' to filter the points based on their 'range' values.

That worked perfectly. Now I can eliminate any scanned points beyond the accuracy threshold I choose for the scans

Thanks for the quick reply.
Paul

Hi, I found very usefull this post.

Is it possible to filter by distance automatically a group of pointclouds using the command line?

For example, to crop a group of 10 e57 clouds, filtering in each scan every point further than 20 meters from each sensor.

Thank you.

Yes, if you know the range you can use the -FILTER_SF option of the command line tool.

daniel wrote: ↑Thu Mar 25, 2021 8:39 pm Yes, if you know the range you can use the -FILTER_SF option of the command line tool.

Hi Daniel, sorry for revive a thread, but do you know if it's possible to compute the distance to sensor from the CLI?

No, I don't think this has been ported to the command line mode yet.

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Could it be added to the to-do list? :grin: Or a quick way to do it with many pointclouds, since now one has to go sensor by sensor performing the action, and then selecting the pointcloud.

Well, if not already there, I can add this to the TODO list. But someone will have to do the code update (that's an open source project after all ;). And it's always hard to know who and when...

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Oh yeah, I know. But if someone would have free time and the item is in the list.. :D

At any rate, many thanks as always for your great support!