CloudCompare forum

Hello,
Apologies, I was unable to find info on this specific use case but I did learn a lot from the Wiki!

I have two large point clouds that are identical, aside from having different offsets and orientations. What is the best way to align them so that corresponding points between the clouds are in the exact same position?
I’ve gotten them closely registered using CC v2.13’s “Apply Transformation” and then performing ICP on the clouds, but is there a smarter way?

Thank you for reading, CC is an amazingly capable piece of software.

Well, maybe using the 'Translate and rotate' function would be simpler/faster than using the 'Apply transformation' tool (unless you have a good idea of the transformation parameters of course).

Otherwise, the 'Align' tool (based on point-pair picking) is also a good way to get a good initial alignment. But ICP will always be the best way to refine the alignment (assuming the 'overlap' parameter is set correctly - in your case it seems it's 100% if the 2 clouds are identical).