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Can't open E57 point clouds despite plugin installed
Posted: Fri Apr 14, 2023 3:58 pm
by subo3
I have built and installed CloudCompare with the PLUGIN_IO_QE57 - plugin. Still CloudCompare does not open E57-point clouds.
Are there other dependencies apart from the plugin in order to open E57 files? The build worked fine with XercesC v3.2.3
Thanks for any advice!
Re: Can't open E57 point clouds despite plugin installed
Posted: Sat Apr 15, 2023 8:49 pm
by cdordoni
Hi subo3,
If you have pano images in your E57, my suggestion would be to export WITHOUT images. I'm not sure if this is specifically the problem with Cloud Compare in your case, but I have seen incompatibility with pano imagery in other applications.
I understand you might want the images, the purpose is to eliminate them as the source of the problem.
Re: Can't open E57 point clouds despite plugin installed
Posted: Sun Apr 16, 2023 11:37 am
by subo3
Hey, thanks for your answer. Unfortunately my problem is, that somehow the plugin is not "activated" or i don't know. It's not like CC crashes when trying to load an E57 file, it simply doesn't offer the option to do so:
- noe57.PNG (23 KiB) Viewed 23926 times
It does not show the plugin in the plugin manager, but the other plugins work fine:
- plugins.PNG (6.38 KiB) Viewed 23926 times
But there were no error messages when building in cmake. After building, i installed via
cmake --build . --config Release --target install
Re: Can't open E57 point clouds despite plugin installed
Posted: Sun Apr 16, 2023 2:53 pm
by cdordoni
I'm using the Windows .EXE, its appears that E57 is not the only format that is missing from your list.
- CC import.png (17.61 KiB) Viewed 23915 times
Re: Can't open E57 point clouds despite plugin installed
Posted: Mon Apr 17, 2023 7:11 pm
by daniel
In the Console of CloudCompare (F8), do you seen some error messages about CC failing to load some plugins maybe?
Depending on how you compiled the plugin, it may have dependencies to DLL files. These DLL files needs to be found via the system PATH variable, or they have to be copied next to CloudCompare's executable.
Re: Can't open E57 point clouds despite plugin installed
Posted: Thu Apr 20, 2023 11:32 am
by subo3
daniel wrote: ↑Mon Apr 17, 2023 7:11 pm
In the Console of CloudCompare (F8), do you seen some error messages about CC failing to load some plugins maybe?
Depending on how you compiled the plugin, it may have dependencies to DLL files. These DLL files needs to be found via the system PATH variable, or they have to be copied next to CloudCompare's executable.
Thanks, actually there is an error message: "QE57_IO_PLUGIN.dll does not seem to be a valid plugin (Cannot load library C:\Program Files (x86)\CloudCompareProjects\CloudCompare\plugins\QE57_IO_PLUGIN.dll)"
I copied QE57_IO_PLUGIN.dll from "/plugins" next to the executable, but still the same error message pops up. Is there anythings else i can do or have to do?
Thanks a lot
Re: Can't open E57 point clouds despite plugin installed
Posted: Sat Apr 22, 2023 8:31 pm
by daniel
No, the plugin DLL should stay in the 'plugins' directory.
It's the dependencies that should go next to the executable file. You can use the 'Dependency Walker' tool (
https://www.dependencywalker.com/) to check what your DLL is expecting. Probably the Xerces DLL and maybe some others.
Re: Can't open E57 point clouds despite plugin installed
Posted: Tue May 09, 2023 11:27 am
by subo3
Thank you, it works now. Only the xercesc-DLL was necessary.
Re: Can't open E57 point clouds despite plugin installed
Posted: Sat Jun 24, 2023 2:18 pm
by mariacz95
Hi, I am completely new to Clod Compare, I am trying to open an E57 file and I am getting this message, can you maybe help me to understand what should I do in order to open the file properly? Thanks :)
" An error occured while loading "Pointcloud file": the third-party library in charge of saving/loading the file has thrown an exception. "
Re: Can't open E57 point clouds despite plugin installed
Posted: Sun Jul 02, 2023 6:22 pm
by daniel
Can you share the cloud with us maybe? (to admin[at]cloudcompare.org)