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Autodesk ReCap


dkeran

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Hi all,

 

I am new to point cloud information having worked with 2D for a long time, now venturing into 3D and discovering point cloud. I'm currently working on a light rail job where our surveyors have laser scanned the entire proposed alignment (city centre). I need to create a lot of cross sections of existing surfaces against some as built elements of our track slab, etc. I have my hands on a few point cloud files that cover the alignment and I have Autodesk ReCap...what can I do? :(

 

I had a look at ReCap and the point cloud data looks great but if I needed a small area from the overall model to export to AutoCAD is this possible? Also the point cloud includes all buildings, lampposts, bins, etc. Can I filter somehow, possibly by elevation?

 

All advice and tips welcome!

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My experience with Recap is that point clouds generally look good when viewed from a distance. As soon as you start zooming in to look at detail they become next to useless in AutoCad and for surveying/design.

 

AutoCad 2015 was a big improvement for Recap/point clouds compared to previous versions.

 

As far as I am aware you can't filter by elevation with Recap. Nor can you get meaningful sections from the data (other than picking points and tracing over the data). I believe the more expensive software programs dedicated to point clouds have a lot more features in terms of cutting sections/shapes from the data.

 

Let us know how you got on with Recap?

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Thanks Organic. I still haven't had a proper opertunity to get up to speed with ReCap, was just testing the water to see if I was possibly wasting my time trying to learn it's functions - seems like I might be! The only function I absolutely require is to be able to export small regions of point clouds to AutoCAD, I can then in AutoCAD triangulate it and use it as surface information - I only need very small areas from time to time.

 

I'll have another look at it and let you know. Thanks for the advice.

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Point clouds work fantastic. I use them a lot. I am well versed in the Faro 3D Laser Scanner product line and we generally use ReCap on many point cloud data processing.

 

You can certainly use ReCap to filter out extraneous items such as lamp posts, street signs, etc. Also, you can use a 3D Cropping Box to "section" any area of the Point Cloud and export it independently, assisting in clarity within your CAD application. I primarily use Revit in my particular line of work, so I've never used AutoCAD with point clouds, so beyond ReCap I will not be able to assist you.

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I'm just having a look at ReCap again now. I've got just the ReCap version which I think may be more of a viewer? I can as you say highlighted or fence an area but there doesn't seem to be a function to export just this area. I can however export the entire project but it would be too big to bring into AutoCad like that.

 

Any ideas if anything can be done with just the ReCap?

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Then you definitely have the version where you can edit things. I would just go through the help file. The program is actually pretty basic because there's not too much you can do with point clouds to begin with.

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Indeed, for Civil work i do the Same.

Crop a selection (display) and export it to a .pts file.

This you could also be de-sampled by, lets say, 5% of the points so the file Will become even smaller but still is enough for a rep. Section. You could do the resampling using notepad++ using a macro to delete even 0-95 point, keep 5 lines and run this macro on the pts file. Afterwards read in the .pts files in recap to get small clean section pointclouds per file. These files can now be xrefed in either Autocad or revit (whatever you're flavor is) my recommendation is AutoCAD to be somewhat faster to draw 2d or 3d polylines to get clean cad geometry...

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There's very little online help for ReCap, well what I could find anyway. I've now sorted out cropping a selection and exporting the area. Though I am now having trouble with filtering out points I don't want. As I said before I have the entire city centre in point cloud. There's people, cars, trees, etc. I don't want. Is the only way of filtering this stuff out through the limit box and try cutting down to size? Seems a bit inaccurate if this is the way? I've also found the intensity clipping option when importing the original point cloud file, though this doesn't seem to filter out trees, people, etc.

 

Also, what does the decimation grid do? Is this an option for the point density per specified area?

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In the Netherlands you can buy already filtered out scan data coming from satellites (AHN iit is called, a governmental initiative). If the scan data is not pre processed you have to do it yourself or someone who specializes in geodata. I think with recap you can select regions to hide (before exporting). There is also the possibility to import points into plain AutoCAD (loose of colors) and use select techniques AutoCAD offers. But I do not know if you want to go that path. I am sure there is plenty of software around to do all kinds of filter techniques before using it in 3d cad..

 

Different path lead to some result. What is you're objective?

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Looks like I only have the basic functions of ReCap under my subscription. My objective was to not have to deal with surveyors! I wanted to have all the laser scan info and extract what I needed, when I needed. Though I do need it cleaned before bringing into AutoCAD. Looks like I cant have my cake and eat it this time!

 

I've learned a lot through this though and thanks to everyone for helping me out.

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Have you tried selecting a region, say a road, using the limit box to get just the road, and then looking at it from the side so you are basically looking down the road. You can do a 3D rotate so that road surface is horizontal and so that you are looking directly down the road. Then you can fence all of the cars, people and trees and delete the points or hide them. You will have to do it in bite sized chunks but it doesn't take that much time. We dealt with quite a few point clouds in this way and it was quite successful in getting rid of what we didn't need. We could even get rid of trees quite close to the face of the building without losing any points on the building.

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