Trim a pointcloud with a mesh

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westergu
Posts: 25
Joined: Tue Oct 24, 2017 8:52 am

Trim a pointcloud with a mesh

Post by westergu »

Hi there,
Is there a way to trim/cut a pointcloud with a solid mesh so that I get two new clouds, one containing all the points that were inside the mesh and one with the points that were outside? I have a pointcloud terrain model and I want to cut a hole in it according to a 3D-excavation design. The design is rather complex and that is why I don't want to do it manually with the segmentation tool. I have made a watertight mesh model of the excavation design in CloudCompare. So can I use this as a trim tool somehow?

Best Regards,
Gustav
daniel
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Re: Trim a pointcloud with a mesh

Post by daniel »

Well, you should simply need to compute the 'cloud-to-mesh' distances with signed distances. This will (virtually) separate the points between the positive points (on one side of the mesh) and the negative ones (on the other side). Then use the 'Edit > SF > Filter by value' tool to split the cloud.
Daniel, CloudCompare admin
westergu
Posts: 25
Joined: Tue Oct 24, 2017 8:52 am

Re: Trim a pointcloud with a mesh

Post by westergu »

That is of course the way to do it! Silly me not thinking about it.
Thank you!

Regards,
Gustav
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