What is a point cloud?

How a point cloud is made

A laser scanner on a tripod measures millions of points from several positions; the scans are then joined into one point cloud. A LiDAR sensor in a tablet or phone measures fewer points with less accuracy, but scans a small room quickly. Each point has X, Y and Z coordinates, and often a colour or an intensity.

File formats

• LAS: a binary format for point clouds, widely used.
• PLY: a format for points and meshes.
• ASCII: text files with one point per line, such as XYZ, PTS, TXT and CSV.

Use in piping work

• measuring existing pipes, nozzles and connection points;
• drawing new routes in an existing space;
• clash detection of new piping against the existing situation;
• recording the situation before and after a modification.

Points of attention

The accuracy of a point cloud depends on the scanner and the way of scanning. Areas that the scanner did not see contain no points. A check measurement on site remains useful for critical connections.

In FlowCAD3D

Point clouds are imported in LAS 1.0 up to and including 1.4, PLY and ASCII (XYZ, PTS, TXT and CSV), up to 16 million points, with snapping on scan points and a clash check against the scan. The app FlowCAD3D Scan for iPad Pro and iPhone Pro with a LiDAR scanner scans a room and sends the point cloud to the project; it is never sent without an action of the user. More: From LiDAR scan to piping model.