Point cloud from Lidar to mesh

[David Poiron]

I've imported a lidar (.LAS) file into vectorworks using the import point cloud command. Is there a way to transform this into a mesh or something similar that can be manipulated?

[Art V]

Not directly in Vectorworks, though there is software that can generate a mesh from a point cloud file. Meshlab is one of those programs.

 

The only exception could be a lidar of a terrain without objects (or just a few small objects), i.e. just a scan of the terrain surface, then you could try using the point cloud data to generate a dtm, but there would probably be way too many points for the dtm to make this a usable option (i.e. the data set would need to be simplified quite a bit depending on the density of the point cloud).

[herbieherb]

I use the OpenSource CloudCompare to do this kind of work. It can handle very huge point clouds. It's able to simplify them and to make meshes.

[Peter Neufeld]

Not sure if this thread is of any use:

Cheers,

Peter