Shrink wrap point cloud not working as expected

Testing Rhino 8 for its Shrink Wrap tool on point clouds but not getting anything useful yet. It’s a laser scan of the front surfaces of a building (not a volume) that contains several flat features. Nothing complex. The hope was to have a ‘skin’ ON the cloud, not “inflated” or “smoothed”, just skin the surfaces and be done with it. I don’t seem to be getting that. The only successful (not failed) attempts produced a blob-like mesh around it, not on it.

I’ve read through the forum posts, tried different settings, added ‘helper’ objects behind the scan to see if adding a volume helped, nada. Am I misunderstanding the use and capabilities of this tool? Seems like every time there’s a promise to make quick work of surfacing a point cloud in Rhino there’s some reason it either doesn’t work or is a pain in the ass. Any enlightenment would be greatly appreciated. Thank you kindly.

Brian Jackson

Hi @Brian_Jackson1,

ShrinkWrap is not a point cloud mesher. Rather, it wraps a mesh around input objects. Points are infinitely small so they are inflated so that a solid can be made from them.

For converting a point cloud to a mesh, you might have a look at the MeshFromPoints command. Many other solutions have been discussed on this forum - some with involve using Grasshopper or other plug-ins. You might spend some time searching.

– Dale