Point Cloud

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Non-contact measuring systems such as laser scanners capture large volumes of point data during the acquisition stage of the inspection process.

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This point data is commonly known as point cloud.

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Scanning systems can be used to provide rapid measurement of complex surfaces or even to reverse engineer parts when no CAD data is available.

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In this tutorial, we will show you how to acquire, manage, and extract measurements from point cloud data.

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We can acquire point clouds directly by connecting to one of the large range of devices supported by our software.

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Alternatively, data which has been captured using a device's proprietary software can be imported into a new PowerInspect session, by simply selecting the "From File" icon from the Point Cloud tab.

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Due to the nature of scanning, it is highly likely that point data may be collected from objects unrelated to the measurement.

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This data should be deleted so it does not influence the inspection results.

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PowerInspect has a variety of picking tools that we can use to select the unwanted data.

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Here, we'll use the lasso to draw our selection, then simply delete the selection.

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Point cloud data can be filtered by distance between points, curvature, or tolerances to reduce the amount of points we want to work with.

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This is useful for managing very large point clouds where points can be removed without reducing accuracy, or for speeding up calculation of an alignment.

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Now that we've filtered the point cloud, we'll project it onto our CAD model.

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This displays a visual comparison of the measured data against the CAD surface, with the color of the points representing the degree to which they are in or out of tolerance.

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Point clouds can also be used to evaluate geometric features both with and without corresponding CAD data.

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When working with CAD, geometric items are selected using the Wireframe Checker.

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In this case, a circle and the type is then set as point cloud circle.

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The measured values are automatically extracted from the point cloud data, which we imported earlier.