Clouds are new to SA as of 2025.2 and are still under development.
Steps to complete:
Import and measurement - Complete
Separation in the tree – Complete
Ability to move and transform – Complete
Feature Extraction – Complete
Alignment – Complete
Meshing –Complete
Voxels, Relationships and Queries – Not yet supported
A new cloud format has been added to SA that greatly improved its graphical display, facilitates geometry extraction and is architected for large cloud display. The is this new "Cloud" format is an optimized structure to store point clouds and associated data ( scanner direction, stripe info, intensity, color,....), and it is designed to handle large point cloud data sets efficiently through optimized RAM usage. In addition it compute a local normal with its points. This produces better feature extraction capabilities and has the added benefit of offering a superior display and lighting. In many cases this improved display eliminates the need to use the real-time mesh display.
To use the new cloud format the Cloud option needs to be selected in the User Options:
Within the Right-Click menu of a Cloud is an option to Split by Selected Cloud Points. This option provides a confinement means to hide all the cloud points except those that are selected, work only with those cloud points and then show the entire cloud again. This can be very helpful when working with large room scans for example:
Cloud prior to splitting:
Split segment used for feature extraction:
The right-click menu works as an on / off toggle to control the split display and while the cloud is split an option is available to copy the selected section directly:
This option offers an easy means to save only the split segment of the larger point cloud as a new point cloud.
While still under construction the there are a number of functions that are not offered as part of the Cloud format. This option to convert the cloud into the traditional Scan Stripe Cloud format provides an easy to use method to convert to the old format when needed for application such as relationship analysis. This function will follow the Split status of the reference Cloud as well and will only save the selected portion as a Scan Stripe Cloud if you chose this option while the cloud is split.