I have a point cloud from a Faro Scanner and am trying to make a mesh of it or create a 3d model. How do I do this?? So far I have been able to import an xyz. file but it takes forever. After that, I don’t know what to do. Thank you!
How big is the scan? You can just right click on XYZ file and type in its size here.
What is the scan of and what is the mesh/model gonna be used for?
Thank you so much for your reply! The xyz. file is 5.24 GB. and it is of a building. My goal is to create a 3d model of the building.
I model composite panels of various shapes and forms over buildings of various shapes and forms on daily basis.
Your scan file is way too big to be working comfortably with in Rhino unless you have a powerhouse of a PC (enterprise grade high end video card and such). Let’s assume you don’t.
What level of detail/precision are you looking for? That will determine the export “type” of your scan/scans.
Solution: I assume there are several individual scans that have been registered and put together and exported as a single XYZ file?
a) Export every individual scan separately and decimate it to a 100-150MB per file if needed. Only export areas of interest (building itself) and not streets trees and such around it to keep the file size down.
b) Import every individual file into a separate layer, so you could turn on and off every single scan if your system gets bogged down with all of them on and/or work on different areas separately.
c) I need to know more about your deliverable to push you in the right direction better. ;) Stuff like who is gonna use it and for what purpose. If it's documentary - the precision level of detail will be lower. If it's for construction purposes - the detail level will be higher. Why do you need meshes and not surfaces or wireframe? Will you be creating layouts with dimensions or will just 3D model be sent out for customer use?
There is software that does meshes automatically - you don’t even need Rhino. That is if you’re fine with meshes. I can get the name of it tomorrow.
Would love to know the name of the Mac software that meshes point clouds. Especially if it also edits them
For PointClouds, I keep Meshab around: http://meshlab.sourceforge.net/
You can do several things, including meshing, reducing the number of points (some nice algorithms for that), and you can even select and modify the points.
I am not sure if it works on Rhino for Mac, but there is a MeshFromPoints command that you need to install: http://download.rhino3d.com/download.asp?id=meshfrompointsV5x64
This has an algorithm that builds up meshes from points (as the name suggests). There are some parameters that you can tweak to get better results based on your incoming points.
But I do agree with @Asterisk, a 5GB Point Cloud will not be easy to work with. Can the scan software export this in chunks? How much RAM do you have?
Mac version doesn’t support plugins yet. As far as I know