Crop and create a section plane of a point cloud in AutoCAD

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Once you attach a point cloud to your AutoCAD drawing, you may find that it is too large to work with.

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There are a few options for cropping or slicing your point cloud into smaller, more manageable areas.

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In this example, suppose that you only want to work on the building in the point cloud.

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In the drawing area, select the point cloud.

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On the Point Cloud tab of the ribbon, in the Cropping panel, click Rectangular Create Crop.

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Draw a rectangle around the building to hide everything outside of the polygon, making only your building visible.

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You can even crop again within the cropped region to create a smaller slice of the point cloud.

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You can then use the ViewCube to orient the view.

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Once you change the UCS, you are ready to start digitizing to create a cross-section drawing.

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Another way to create a slice of your point cloud that may be more useful is to use the Section Plane tools.

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A section plane creates a section object that acts as a cutting plane through 3D objects and point clouds.

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From the Point Cloud tab, Section panel, use the Section Plane drop-down to select the Top view.

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This can also be done from the side or any other direction, using two points.

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The point cloud is cut by a section plane.

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Select the section plane to open the Section Plane tab.

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From the Modify panel, expand the Section Type drop-down

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and select Slice to create a 2D box that shows the depth along the direction of the cutting plane.

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Now use the Adjust controls to set the width and the position of the slice—specifically, the elevation of the slice.

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This can be helpful if you create your slice at a certain elevation,

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but there is something in the way, such as furniture, in this case.

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You can easily adjust the elevation until the cut is where you can clearly see the walls that you want to draw.

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When you are done and no longer need the section, you can easily delete the object.