Othorview projections are great and the distance tool is good for getting a few point to point measurements.
It would be great however if basic shapes could be drawn in orthoview, circles, squares, lines etc. and be export as DXF.
This would make reverse engineering parts much much easier as I’ve found sometimes exporting the point cloud and measuring off that can be a bit too messy in CAD. The orthoview simplifies things and makes it easier to see what sections I am measuring.
Hi Nick,
I fear that this would open a whole new part in the software and would probably lead too much away from the core tasks. I’m sure there are specialized tools for that purpose.
Why don’t you combine your two methods and export the Orthos into your CAD? I do that all the time…
Nick, does export point cloud to CAD mean you can snap to points? Or mesh nodes? I ask because PC enablement is imminent but not quite yet, in my favoured dwg-based BricsCAD. Until then, Brics chokes on PCs and big meshes. So I’ve no such experience in CAD yet, without going to 30-day Autocad or Microstation.
Gotz, orthophotos in CAD means purely visual clicking to measurement points?
Hi Götz,
I’ve found Solidworks will only accept jpg, so I lose all my scale which makes it unreliable. Is there a CAD package that can accept a format TIFF for instance and retain correct scale?
Understand it throws in a lot more on to the “to do list”. I’d be happy if there was a 3rd party program I could do this last part with but I can’t really find anything.
Tom,
Correct, snap to points. I usually slice the point cloud into cross sections and make sketches off it. I find sometimes though its a bit difficult to interpret because its Solidworks cant display colourised point cloud. I’ve also imported an orthoview into CAD and traced over that, works but can’t be as confident with the scaling.
some autocad’s can import georeferenced tifs.
needs to be either civil3d or autocad map.
otherwise you could use global mapper. which is much cheaper than autocad.
Hi Tom,
you can also just export a slice of your pointcloud for ground plan or sections (or anything, really). That will make performance more manageable. It’s totally common to do that because otherwise it’s very tricky to interpret the hundreds of thousands of points properly…
Yes, in an orthophoto you cannot snap to anything, apart from the corners of the file. :-) But that’s not a problem because even if I have real points from a pointcloud, I switch snap off. Otherwise I cannot control exactly where it snaps to (when the density is rather high) and even laser scans have a certain noise, which means that points on a wall (even in a thin slice) are not all on a line but arranged in a thin cloud, a bit like a galaxy seen from the side. So with snap turned on, you can end up on either side.
Hi Nick,
I always use JPG for that purpose since I think that performance and loading times are better, not to mention storage space. I simply set Ortho Pixel Size to a practical number so that I can easily determine the real measurements of the image in CAD. If you need the geo-referencing, then you can export this info along with the orthophoto. Either your CAD can use that file directly, or you can manually open it and extract the center of the image (and all other values) in clear text and adjust it in CAD. It’s a few additional steps but easy enough once you get the hang of it…
Yes, creating the slice in RC and importing just that to CAD is something I’ve been told, had forgotten, and should try soon - thanks. Xmas project! Tho, not sure that even that’s possible, without formal PC enablement in the CAD system.
Hey Tom,
What do you mean by “enablement”? a module to be able to import pointclouds? That’s not really neccessary since they will just be displayed as normal points. I myself have a chinese ACAD substitute (Though I want to change over to Brics asap) and a few thousand is not problem performance-wise. Jees, I just looked and it’s over 200k points for three slices in a large-ish building… :-o
Good news - apart from the ‘jees’ follow-up!
Enablement may mean to import point clouds, but more to be able to rotate such huge ‘entites’ e.g. by decimating the display during rotation (or indeed to function at all).
PCs rotate magnificently in standalone Pointools, but much more ‘sticky’ in Microstation, which uses Pointools as its PC engine. I was told that Microstation does not have a full implimentation of Pointools, for some tech reason. Got too baffled by Acad/Recap 2018 on 30day trial, so don’t know how PCs work in Acad.
I was also told that the trick that Pointools and Recap do, is to generate about 10 different versions of the PC/mesh, at different LoDs, which can be switched between as appropriate during rotation. And I was told that the way RC works, that’s not possible, which partly explains RC’s speed! This may have just been ‘spoiling’ talk, as it came from a Bentley boffin.
BricsCAD, tho late to the game, look like taking a novel approach (as usual) to PC enablement, involving VR integration somehow!
My hope is for ordinary 2D Architect/Surveyor/Builder users to be able to be able to use orthophotos as ‘as existing’ survey base, for sites and existing buildings, with minimum need for augmentation by manual drafting.
And for 3D ditto users to be able to build their 3D model direct ‘into’ the point cloud/mesh/textured model.