Point cloud - Too many points

[Anonymous]

I may have pushed the limits of how many cloud files to import in a blank ARCHICAD file in attempts to find a workflow on how to use them.

There was a total of 8 files e57 with roughly 10GB of Data. Are xyz files better?

I made an independent layer for each scans so I can turn it on and off easily, however I wanted to test to see what would happen when all are on and open the 3D view. In case I didn't know ARCHICAD and turned everything on.

The file just became unusable as it was in a permanent frozen state, or may take 20 minutes or more to respond, this was expected....

Are there better ways to manipulate the information besides layer management?

Is there a way to disable Turning on all layers, or specific layers?

I was thinking I could make a renovation status for each scans and use the pin option for each scan. See attachment.

Other thoughts on what others are doing would be greatly appreciated...

[Laszlo Nagy]

Well, it seems like you are really pushing the limit here.
10 GB is 10 000 000 000 bytes, which I think is probably in the range of 100-200 million individual points in those Point Clouds (if we assume that 1 point takes 50-100 bytes of data).
I don't think it matters whether it is an E57 or XYZ file, both are converted to a Point Cloud Object file when imported into ARCHICAD.

I was thinking about this thing for a while since it is a thing that can definitely bring ARCHICAD, or any BIM application for that matter, to its knees.

What I think would be useful is for GRAPHISOFT to implement some kind of technology using which it would be possible to make the point cloud less dense. This would mean that, for example, only every second point in the point cloud file is imported. Or every 3rd or 4th. This could be set by the user during the import process. This way a very large point cloud file could be made much lighter and more manageable.

Handling XYZ files in this regard is easier than handling E57 files since XYZ is a textual file format it which each line represents one Point of the Point Cloud.
If you had some utility program which could take an XYZ file and delete every 2nd line in it, then same it under a new name, then using this method you could manually reduce the size of those Point Cloud files, then import those.
Or you could delete 3 lines, keep every 4th line and then save it as a new XYZ file, that would decrease the number of points in each file by a factor of 4.
I think this method should/could work, probably you would still get the geometry, there would only be fewer points everywhere. So you wouldn't have to worry about losing parts of your point cloud geometry by reason of deleting so many points.

It would be interesting to know which component of the computer is choking when you try to display them in 3D. During the generation of 3D while it seems frozen, you could check how much memory is used, because if the 16 GB is not enough ARCHICAD swaps data to virtual memory on the hard drive, which will slow it down to a crawl. This can be remedied by putting in another 16 GBs of RAM.
Or it is the CPU? Do you see the CPU running at 100%. If you do it is probably working as hard as it can but this is how fast it can process all that data. This can be remedied only by a new CPU but even that will not increase the speed as much (and may require buying a new computer, which is not a really good option).

[Erwin Edel]

I've got zero experience with pointclouds, but I know there is software that can 'vectorise' the data, resulting in much smaller models. www.pointfuse.com for example.

Sadly, another piece of software to buy. Hopefully in the future ArchiCAD will be able to reconize simple geometry like planes and tubes, rather than having to work with millions of points.

For now we are sticking to the old way of single point laser measurement, along with ye olde tape measure in our office.

[Gorazd]

I had a good result with free open source application Cloud Compare (http://www.danielgm.net/cc/). You can open your pointcloud and reduce the number of points. I had a 1 by 1 milimeter dense pointcolud, that was too much for ArchiCAD. I reduced it to 1/10th of the size. One of pointclouds was also without RGB information, just intensity, so all points in ArchiCAD turned black. With Cloudcompare I managed to get at least grayscale information.
Hope it helps.

[Erwin Edel]

That sounds very interesting, Gorazd.

[Anonymous]

Thank you for the information Laszlo, I will try and get smaller files and see how the xyz format works.

I also will try Goraz suggestion.

To make things a lot worst the cloud files I have have a crazy origin point because we started off the model with Civil coordinates which puts our model x=64572' and y= 252831' from the origin point.

Placing point clouds can be challenging as one has to set all the correct parameters under the object tool first (layers, rotation, and height maybe too?). So that the object doesn't rotate or move up or down.

To respond to the software freezing: Need to retry it and document it.

I agree that I need to find a way of filtering the cloud information of what is needed for the import into ARCHICAD for best results.

Gorazd wrote:
I had a good result with free open source application Cloud Compare (http://www.danielgm.net/cc/). You can open your pointcloud and reduce the number of points. I had a 1 by 1 milimeter dense pointcolud, that was too much for ArchiCAD. I reduced it to 1/10th of the size. One of pointclouds was also without RGB information, just intensity, so all points in ArchiCAD turned black. With Cloudcompare I managed to get at least grayscale information.
Hope it helps.

laszlonagy wrote:
Well, it seems like you are really pushing the limit here.
10 GB is 10 000 000 000 bytes, which I think is probably in the range of 100-200 million individual points in those Point Clouds (if we assume that 1 point takes 50-100 bytes of data).
I don't think it matters whether it is an E57 or XYZ file, both are converted to a Point Cloud Object file when imported into ARCHICAD.

I was thinking about this thing for a while since it is a thing that can definitely bring ARCHICAD, or any BIM application for that matter, to its knees.

What I think would be useful is for GRAPHISOFT to implement some kind of technology using which it would be possible to make the point cloud less dense. This would mean that, for example, only every second point in the point cloud file is imported. Or every 3rd or 4th. This could be set by the user during the import process. This way a very large point cloud file could be made much lighter and more manageable.

Handling XYZ files in this regard is easier than handling E57 files since XYZ is a textual file format it which each line represents one Point of the Point Cloud.
If you had some utility program which could take an XYZ file and delete every 2nd line in it, then same it under a new name, then using this method you could manually reduce the size of those Point Cloud files, then import those.
Or you could delete 3 lines, keep every 4th line and then save it as a new XYZ file, that would decrease the number of points in each file by a factor of 4.
I think this method should/could work, probably you would still get the geometry, there would only be fewer points everywhere. So you wouldn't have to worry about losing parts of your point cloud geometry by reason of deleting so many points.

It would be interesting to know which component of the computer is choking when you try to display them in 3D. During the generation of 3D while it seems frozen, you could check how much memory is used, because if the 16 GB is not enough ARCHICAD swaps data to virtual memory on the hard drive, which will slow it down to a crawl. This can be remedied by putting in another 16 GBs of RAM.
Or it is the CPU? Do you see the CPU running at 100%. If you do it is probably working as hard as it can but this is how fast it can process all that data. This can be remedied only by a new CPU but even that will not increase the speed as much (and may require buying a new computer, which is not a really good option).

[Anonymous]

Yes, we do not scans building either and use the laser measurer and tape as well.

For this particular project the CM does scans of the existing conditions as part of their coordination process and I happen to be given the scans in order to coordinate some existing conditions.

Erwin wrote:
I've got zero experience with pointclouds, but I know there is software that can 'vectorise' the data, resulting in much smaller models. www.pointfuse.com for example.

Sadly, another piece of software to buy. Hopefully in the future ArchiCAD will be able to reconize simple geometry like planes and tubes, rather than having to work with millions of points.

For now we are sticking to the old way of single point laser measurement, along with ye olde tape measure in our office.

[Frank Beister]

Are there experiences about #of nodes/clouds and clouds/project to keep performance alive?

-> Wishlist: Imported clouds are objects. Objects can be intelligent. Optional cropping of data extension and density inside of the object. Or deviding import-cloud into several Objects with low density, managed by a main object, which switches individual density higher.

[Laszlo Nagy]

I just learned about a free Point Cloud processing software called CloudCompare which may help you with this:

http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=54196

[Anonymous]

Cool, thanks a lot for that info

laszlonagy wrote:
I just learned about a free Point Cloud processing software called CloudCompare which may help you with this:

http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=54196