Home > Products > Point Cloud > Help > Tutorial > Tutorial 1 - Drape a surface over a set of points

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In this tutorial we will drape a surface over a point cloud.


Step 1: Start Point Cloud.

Step 2: Select Import Points from the Points menu.

Step 3: The Point File dialog box is displayed. Browse for the file Drape Surface Sample 2.txt (typically located in C:\Program Files\SYCODE\Point Cloud\Samples\) and click Open from the Open dialog box.

Step 4: Select the format and delimiters in the Point File dialog box and click OK.

The points from Drape Surface Sample 2.txt are imported into the current 3DM file.

Step 5: Select Drape Surface from the Surface menu

Step 6: The Drape Surface Options dialog box is displayed. Choose Top as the Drape direction and click Ok. Note that the vector is automatically set to (0, 0, -1).

Step 7: The Surface Parameters dialog box is displayed. Do not modify the parameters. Click Ok to accept the default values.

A surface is draped over the points. As you can see the surface is highly uneven. 

The uneven surface (wireframe mode)


The uneven surface (shaded mode)

This is because the points are not evenly spaced although the points seem to be in the form of a regular matrix.

Step 8: Delete the surface by selecting Delete Surface from the Surface menu.

Step 9: Repeat Step 5 to 7. This time specify 29 and 102 for the number of rows and columns respectively. This gives us an accurate surface.

The smooth surface (wireframe mode)

Tutorial 2 - Wrap a mesh around a concave point cloud
 

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