Point clouds still slow

[Denissss]

Hi,

I was wondering if someone else is using point clouds and how are your experience with it?

Last time I was able to use point clouds decently in AC26. Then in AC27 point clouds were broken and worked very slow. Tech support promised that it is a known issue and in AC28 it would be fixed. But for me point clouds are still extremely slow. Just have to work with one and it just goes so slow that it is unusable. Every move just keeps buffering for about 20 seconds. In 3D its even worse.

I have a .e57 file that is 3.6gb and it is just a small private home. Point cloud has some surrounding in it too, but nothing too crazy.

Is it still broken or there is something that needs to be done for it to work properly?

Operating system used: Windows 5000

[Christophe Fortineau · Accepted solution]

Hello Denissss,

The problem stems from the fact that your point cloud needs to be optimized beforehand. A cloud of more than 500MB for a single-family home is more than enough most of the time.

I recommend the CloudCompare application for this. It's free and available here : https://cloudcompare-org.danielgm.net/release/

[Denissss]

Hey,

Yeah you might be right. I just checked that in AC26 I used to work with clouds about 400-700mb and then it ran ok.

Weird though that the same company who made my point clouds previously now gave me this huge file to work on myself and charged even higher price for it than before.

I guess I have to try this cloudcompare then.

Thanks!

[Laszlo Nagy · Accepted solution]

I think 3.6 GB is huge for a Point Cloud of a single family home. I would say that it is just too dense and there are way too many points in it.

In CloudCompare, there is a feature called subsampling:

https://www.cloudcompare.org/doc/wiki/index.php?title=Edit%5CSubsample

You set a distance (for example, 10 mm), and CloudCompare goes through the whole Point Cloud, and makes sure that no two Points are closer than 10 mm to each other. This usually results in the removal of a huge number of points from the Point Cloud so it becomes much lighter, and will be easier to handle in Archicad. In my experience, processing large Point Clouds in CloudCompare in this manner is a necessary step before you can use them in Archicad without slowdowns. The other thing you can do in CloudCompare is go into top view and draw a cutting/cropping rectangle or polygon around your building if the Point Cloud contains a lot of the surroundings that are not very necessary. Only the Points within the drawn rectangle/polygon will be kept by the command. That can also reduce its size.

The goal is to make the Point Cloud light enough so Archicad can handle it well, while still staying dense enough so it is usable for reference or as a basis of modeling geometry.

[Denissss]

Hey Laszlo,

Thanks for the info. Did exactly what you told and got my cloud to about 400 MB. It is now actually workable and runs pretty well.

Probably my previous clouds were already optimized by surveyor and I just did not have to think about optimizing it myself. 

[Denissss]

Idk. Something is still broken. I have about 400 MB point cloud that I imported. Used it for about 2 hours and then AC starts choking again on itself.

I have two AC windows open one has a project and another just point cloud. Its like it chokes for about a minute or two and then works again. Then again and again and again. Mostly in 3D. But if view range on a plan or a section is too deep then those view choke also. 3D is basically unusable.

Probably need to try AC26 again for point clouds if it is better or not, but I do remember that in AC26 I actually could have my project and model in the same AC file and it worked fine.

It does not seem to be my computer also as performance stats while using point cloud do not jump even half way of computer capability. It uses GPU that its supposed to use, CPU utilization is normal etc.

[Christophe Fortineau]

Denissss,

Is the cloud close to the origin? Archicad (like all 3D softwares) has a spatial limit (approximately 80km in diameter around the origin point). The more polygons there are, the more this spatial limit decreases. The 3D engine has its limits!

[Denissss]

Yep. I moved it to the origin when I imported it.

[Laszlo Nagy]

If you try it in Ac26 as well, could you report back with your findings? If it turns out that the same Point Cloud handles well in Ac26 and causes severe slowdowns in Ac28, then that will be something the guys at GS HQ will want to know about so they can find the cause and fix it.

[Denissss]

I might report a bit later when I have used it a bit more if I do not forget about it.

But I used yesterday for about half a day same point cloud in AC26 base version (without updates) and it works fine. Also used it a bit today. Basically plans and sections and elevations work quite smoothly and 3D has some slowness to it, but it is nicely usable. Much, much better than in AC27 and AC28.

When AC27 was latest version I spoke to tech support and they told me that in AC26 update 3 this pointcloud functionality degraded. There is actually my thread also about this: https://community.graphisoft.com/t5/Collaboration-with-other/Point-cloud-fast-and-then-slow/td-p/394.... 

Also I tried importing this huge version of point cloud that is 3.6 GB into AC26. It kind of works also a bit better than in AC28. It is still unusable, but at least it does not choke for 20-30 seconds, before it registers a move I made. But this optimized 400 MB cloud works well for now in AC26.

Funny thing is that in AC28 first time when I imported the cloud it kind of worked also, but in a bit of time its started choking and never stopped. Even if I restart AC. And I did not even change anything in the project file as I now use point cloud only as reference for taking measurements and I model into another project file. Now I am measuring from AC26 file and modeling to a separate AC28 file.