topic Re: Import point cloud to ArchiCAD and make a terrain from it in Collaboration with other software

Import point cloud to ArchiCAD and make a terrain from it

Anonymous — Thu, 18 Feb 2016 11:24:41 GMT

Hi,
I found an interesting article which describes some of the steps needed in order to import a point cloud to ArchiCAD and make a terrain from that point cloud:
https://asiabim.wordpress.com/2016/02/10/importing-point-clouds-and-modelling-the-terrain

However the the final terrain looks a little bit "flat" so to say (photo attached below).

Is it possible to somehow make that terrain a bit more precise (meaning: it corresponding to the position of the actual point cloud points)?

Thank you for the reply.

Re: Import point cloud to ArchiCAD and make a terrain from i

Laszlo Nagy — Thu, 18 Feb 2016 13:30:52 GMT

I checked that article.
Basically you use the Point Cloud only as a Reference. Then you have to place many many Coordinate Dimension objects as the X, Y and Z coordinates of these will be scheduled then saved as Excel, manipulated there a bit to achieve the desired format, then saved as XYZ files. Then a Mesh placed based on those XYZ points. So the resolution of the Mesh that will be created from that XYZ file will be dependent on how many Coordinate Dimension objects you have placed.
The more you placed the more accurate the final result will be.
It is probably a good idea to place a lot more of them in areas where the terrain varies a lot.
In any case I would probably place hundreds of them before scheduling them and exporting to Excel.

Re: Import point cloud to ArchiCAD and make a terrain from i

Anonymous — Thu, 18 Feb 2016 18:59:13 GMT

Thank you Laszlo.

Can you suggest some better method of importing a point cloud into ArchiCAD and making a precise terrain from it?

Re: Import point cloud to ArchiCAD and make a terrain from i

Laszlo Nagy — Fri, 19 Feb 2016 08:46:03 GMT

Not that I can think of.
What would be a useful thing (and I don't know if there is such a utility out there) is a little program to reduce the number of points in a point cloud. So for example, if you have a Point Cloud file of 1 million points, this utility could reduce evenly the number of points to, let's say a 1000 points, then save it as an XYZ file.
Then you could import that 1000 point XYZ file into ARCHICAD and make a Mesh out of it. Then the Mesh would not slow down because of the high number of surface points in it.
If you tried to convert 100s of thousands or millions of points to a Mesh, that would pretty much kill it, I think.

Re: Import point cloud to ArchiCAD and make a terrain from i

Anonymous — Fri, 19 Feb 2016 12:02:20 GMT

Thank you Laszlo.

Would it be possible to explain this step a bit in detail please:

laszlonagy wrote:
Then you could import that 1000 point XYZ file into ARCHICAD and make a Mesh out of it.

I am interested in how to make a Mesh from those imported points.

Re: Import point cloud to ArchiCAD and make a terrain from i

Laszlo Nagy — Fri, 19 Feb 2016 12:11:32 GMT

Step 12. of that article details how this is done. It is a command in ARCHICAD. It takes a TXT file that contains a list of X, Y and Z coordinates and creates a Mesh based on it:

https://asiabim.wordpress.com/2016/02/10/importing-point-clouds-and-modelling-the-terrain/

Re: Import point cloud to ArchiCAD and make a terrain from i

David Maudlin — Fri, 19 Feb 2016 12:53:43 GMT

nedostizni wrote:
I am interested in how to make a Mesh from those imported points.

This is an article I wrote awhile ago, but still should re relevant: Creating a mesh from a txt file.

nedostizni: your signature looks out of date.

David

Re: Import point cloud to ArchiCAD and make a terrain from i

Anonymous — Fri, 19 Feb 2016 16:56:01 GMT

Thank you Laszlo and David.

@David: is your article made for rectangular (at least rectangular in 2d view) meshes only?
It's almost impossible to name which X, Y, Z coordinate coresponds to which point in a point cloud with randomly arranged points.

P.S.

I edited my PC configuration in my profile. Thank you.

Re: Import point cloud to ArchiCAD and make a terrain from i

David Maudlin — Sat, 20 Feb 2016 14:39:29 GMT

nedostizni wrote:
@David: is your article made for rectangular (at least rectangular in 2d view) meshes only?

No, this will work for any polygonal shape, but I think ArchiCAD finds the boundary then adds the other points to the interior (might not work correctly for an "S" type shape).

nedostizni wrote:
It's almost impossible to name which X, Y, Z coordinate coresponds to which point in a point cloud with randomly arranged points.

Understandable. This thread has a link to software that can reduce the number of points: Point cloud - Too many points.

nedostizni wrote:
I edited my PC configuration in my profile.

Thanks, shows you have the Place Mesh but not the Point Cloud import features.

David

Re: Import point cloud to ArchiCAD and make a terrain from i

Anonymous — Sat, 20 Feb 2016 18:58:58 GMT

Thank you for the reply David.
Let me just quote one part:

David wrote:
nedostizni wrote:
It's almost impossible to name which X, Y, Z coordinate coresponds to which point in a point cloud with randomly arranged points.
Understandable. This thread has a link to software that can reduce the number of points: Point cloud - Too many points.
...
No, this will work for any polygonal shape, but I think ArchiCAD finds the boundary then adds the other points to the interior (might not work correctly for an "S" type shape).

So If I understood you correctly, in case of rectangular (rectangular in top view) point cloud, it just needs to be exported from some other application (Rhino3d for example) in .xyz file, and imported to ArchCAD.

But if the point cloud in .xyz file is not rectangular (rectangular in top view), then it needs to be edited according to your article? Otherwise, the "S" shaped point cloud will look rectangular too?

Did I understand that correctly or not?

Re: Import point cloud to ArchiCAD and make a terrain from i

Laszlo Nagy — Sat, 20 Feb 2016 19:26:56 GMT

Another user suggested me on Twitter that Cigraph's Architerra also has some distance filtering options when importing XYZ files:

https://twitter.com/OddGoderstad/status/700662321039826946

Re: Import point cloud to ArchiCAD and make a terrain from i

David Maudlin — Sun, 21 Feb 2016 13:43:16 GMT

nedostizni wrote:
David wrote:
nedostizni wrote:
It's almost impossible to name which X, Y, Z coordinate coresponds to which point in a point cloud with randomly arranged points.
Understandable. This thread has a link to software that can reduce the number of points: Point cloud - Too many points.
...
No, this will work for any polygonal shape, but I think ArchiCAD finds the boundary then adds the other points to the interior (might not work correctly for an "S" type shape).

So If I understood you correctly, in case of rectangular (rectangular in top view) point cloud, it just needs to be exported from some other application (Rhino3d for example) in .xyz file, and imported to ArchCAD.

But if the point cloud in .xyz file is not rectangular (rectangular in top view), then it needs to be edited according to your article? Otherwise, the "S" shaped point cloud will look rectangular too?

Did I understand that correctly or not?

A point cloud is just a collection of points, there is no explicit boundary. A Mesh has an explicit boundary (perimeter) which ArchiCAD has to create when the points are converted to a Mesh. The xyz or txt file does not carry information about which points are interior and which are perimeter, so it is possible that ArchiCAD will create a Mesh with an incorrect perimeter, which can be fixed after import. In any case the xyz file does not need to be rectangular.

David

Re: Import point cloud to ArchiCAD and make a terrain from i

Anonymous — Tue, 23 Feb 2016 23:20:03 GMT

Thank you Laszlo.

Thank you David. Then I did not understand the purpose of your article. It shows how to create a point cloud manually (so to speak), without having to create it in some other application (Rhino, 3ds max...)?

Re: Import point cloud to ArchiCAD and make a terrain from i

David Maudlin — Wed, 24 Feb 2016 12:42:22 GMT

nedostizni wrote:
Then I did not understand the purpose of your article. It shows how to create a point cloud manually (so to speak), without having to create it in some other application (Rhino, 3ds max...)?

The purpose was just to show that the Place Mesh from Surveyor's Data command could be used for more than importing terrain data, that shapes generated from points, like a geometry formula, could be imported into ArchiCAD as a Mesh. With the addition of more modeling tools since AC 14 (Shell, Morph), this method has less of a use.

David

Re: Import point cloud to ArchiCAD and make a terrain from i

Anonymous — Wed, 24 Feb 2016 18:23:58 GMT

Thank you David

...that shapes generated from points, like a geometry formula, could be imported into ArchiCAD as a Mesh.

Did I understand it correctly that your article describes how to manually create a point cloud, without it being previously created (the point cloud) in some other modelling application?

Re: Import point cloud to ArchiCAD and make a terrain from i

David Maudlin — Thu, 25 Feb 2016 13:49:44 GMT

nedostizni wrote:
Did I understand it correctly that your article describes how to manually create a point cloud, without it being previously created (the point cloud) in some other modelling application?

Yes. As long as the .txt file is formatted correctly, ArchiCAD will read the 3D points and create a Mesh from them. The source of the 3D points can be anything.

David

Re: Import point cloud to ArchiCAD and make a terrain from i

Anonymous — Thu, 25 Feb 2016 21:52:23 GMT

Thank you for the help once again.

Re: Import point cloud to ArchiCAD and make a terrain from it

agroni — Wed, 22 May 2019 04:18:30 GMT

I am opening a discussion from 2016 here again
Currently working with AC22, has there been any improvement concerning the transformation of a point cloud into a mesh? Grasshopper?

Re: Import point cloud to Archicad and make a terrain from it

Josh Verran — Thu, 09 Jun 2022 23:40:24 GMT

Rekindling a bit of an old post here, I have been playing around with https://opentopography.org/ , from there I'm able to download point clouds from various locations on the globe.

From there I have been opening in Cloud Compare, I'm very fresh, but I think there's a way to manipulate the point cloud (crop, reduce points).

From there can export as either *.e57, or XYZ (TXT).

Can import the point cloud to AC, and/or create mesh from the XYZ (with a little tweaking in Excel).