Trimble Business Center

Is it possible to copy and move portions of a point cloud? We have a project where we are moving an existing building and it would be beneficial to copy the building from the point cloud and have the ability to move it into a new desired location to show the client what it would look like. 

I feel like this could also be used for conceptual plans to cut out parts of the point cloud that would be replaced by the model and show what the finished product would look like in existing conditions.

Hello Patrick,

I think "Geo-reference Scans" would be the function you have to use.

Maybe you have to export the part of the pointcloud as LAS or XYZ (PTS) first.

Pat

You can for sure cut out a part of a point cloud and patch in a different one - I was discussing this with someone just yesterday that had done an Aerial Drone Survey of a City Block area and then had done Vertical Scans of a Building from multiple stations and he wanted to cut out the Aerial Scan where the building is and replace it with the Vertical scan data - so I showed him how to use the Cutting Plane view with a Horizontal plane and thickness at half the height of the building Elevation to get a Building Outline - we drew a polyline in the Cutting Plane to get the building Footprint, then offset the line a little to give a little space around the building and then used the polyline polygon to cut out the area from the Drone Scan and then patched the building data into the drone scan using Add to Site Region command.

To answer your question about moving the building - you need to have at least two points (two corners) (can be more) of the target location for the Building and then two dots in the point cloud that are close to those corners - what I would do is draw a 3 point rectangle in the starting position point cloud to represent the building footprint and then copy and move and rotate that into the desired location for the building. Create a point on at least two corners of the Target location for the building. Now use the Georeference Point Cloud function (I believe this needs the canning Module) and it will ask you for point pairs. The first field is for the Target Location Point and the second is a Point Cloud Dot point in the current point cloud position. With just two points it will compute the Shifts and rotations for the point cloud and move it into position. You can then use the Point Cloud Region stuff to crop out what you need and add it to a model of the Target Location etc and hide the remainder of your point cloud.

Hope this helps

Alan