CloudCompare forum

Hi, this is my first time actually working with CC and it's an amazing software I've got to say. I'm working on surface deformation on road and I was wondering if I could get any recommendations on which of the fit tools would be best for me.

And also if I could get further explanation on how the Tool>Fit>Planar work( since it's the one giving me the results closest to what I want).

P.s is there anywhere to calculate geometric data(area, volume) of selected areas along the surface

I was going to say that the 'Tools > Fit > Plane' is probably the best option for a road. And it works by determining the 'least squares' best fitting plane (= which minimizes the squared errors/distances from the points to this plane).

The 'Quadric' may be interesting as well (if the road is a little curvy).

And last, to compute the area, you have to 'mesh' the point cloud (or the subset of points). There are various ways to do that, but it can be tricky to get a good result at least with CC). If it's a big shape, then the Poisson Reconstruction plugin is probably a good choice, and if it's a small subset rather flat, the the 'Tools > Fit > Facet' will output a facet that has many components (contour, mesh, etc.) which already displays the surface.

For the volume, the only choice is the 2.5D Volume calculation tool, but you need a reference.