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Archicad 20 - Has any work been done on point clouds?

Anonymous
Not applicable
Graphisoft heavily promoted point cloud support as a new feature of Archicad 19. We have fully tested Archicad 19's point cloud capabilities and find it lacking in several key areas.

Can anyone comment on whether any new work has been done on point cloud integration for Archicad 20? Particularly, we are interested in bug fixes, visualisation features, and filetype support.

I haven't seen any news in the literature. Any information would be most welcome.

Thanks
5 REPLIES 5
Laszlo Nagy
Community Admin
Community Admin
As far as I know there are no new point cloud-related features in ARCHICAD 20.
There may have been bug fixes, I am not sure about that.
Loving Archicad since 1995 - Find Archicad Tips at x.com/laszlonagy
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Anonymous
Not applicable
Thanks Laszlo. It's a shame that Graphisoft has not paid more attention to this half-baked feature.

Revit and Microstation are way out in front, each with an advanced (and growing) point-cloud feature set, whereas Archicad struggles with basic functionality and no obvious development roadmap.
Anonymous
Not applicable
afingret wrote:
Thanks Laszlo. It's a shame that Graphisoft has not paid more attention to this half-baked feature.

Revit and Microstation are way out in front, each with an advanced (and growing) point-cloud feature set, whereas Archicad struggles with basic functionality and no obvious development roadmap.
I think it would be valuable to list the particular features/shortcomings you see - as a pointer for GS to consider....
Anonymous
Not applicable
Well since you asked 😉

1. The 4GB limit on point clouds is not sufficient for modern hi-res scans of large objects (like buildings)

2. More formats supported. Personally I'd like to see import support for RCS, RCP, LAS and LAZ, but there are other popular formats too. Every time a big point cloud needs to be indexed/reformatted, it can mean half a day of lost productivity.

3. Point clouds should have an independent "lock" or "freeze" feature, that prevents selection of the point cloud while working in 2D and 3D views. With millions of points on screen, it is a challenge not to select the point cloud itself (even when the layer is locked).

4. There should be an independent "view range slider" in floor plan views that affects only the point cloud and not the Archicad model. It would be nice if this was relative to the Story Elevation and Height to Next. This should function even when the point cloud or it's layer is locked.

5. Colour point cloud filters are very helpful when dealing with non-RGB scan data. Many other packages provide colourization options. The most useful tend to be elevation and normals filters.

In my opinion, Graphisoft should have a look at Undet - they seem to be ahead of the curve for point cloud visualization in non-native software packages. Their plugin for Sketchup is fantastic. In fact, Nemetschek should just purchase Undet and incorporate advanced point cloud support into their entire product line.
Anonymous
Not applicable
Make more wishes for Point clouds and Vote!!

Here is one I made
http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=51596&highlight=
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