Working with point clouds

In BIMcollab Zoom you can add point clouds to your project in the same way as you would add an IFC model to perform a side by side comparison.

In the menu select File > Add to project and select the point cloud file(s) you wish to add the project.

In the Open dialog, choose 'Point cloud file (*.e57, *pts, *.txt, *.xyz)'.

BIMcollab supports point clouds in the E57 file format (.e57) as well as in a text file format (.txt, .xyz).

When you have selected the correct file, choose ' Open'. The Point cloud will be loaded in BIMcollab Zoom.

Because point clouds can be quite large, BIMcollab Zoom may not load all of the points in order to save memory and optimize performance.

You can see how many of the points are loaded in the Summary tab when the scan is selected in the model tree.

In order to load more or less points, right click on the scan in the model tree view and select 'Reload model' in the context model. You can then choose which percentage of points to load.
E57 files can also contain multiple scans. If a point cloud is too large to handle practically, you can also unload some scans that are less important.

Once loaded, the point clouds can be manipulated in the same way as you would an IFC including moving and rotating it. ( see Aligning models)

If you would like to compare the point cloud to your IFC models, add them to to your project as well.

You can also color a point cloud in order to create more contrast between the point cloud and the IFC model. To do so simply select the point cloud in the model tree and then click on the color selection button in the menu.

For more information on how to change the colors of components, consult the articles Manually change the color of specific components and Remove colors and annotations

Icon change

In BIMcollab Zoom version 7.4 or later, the icons in the navigation tab for both the local file and shared project folders have been improved as follows:

 

• Related Articles

• Working with Sub-Components in BIMcollab Zoom

  In this article, we will guide you through working with Smart Views, conflict Detection, and Lists in BIMcollab Zoom when dealing with composed IFC elements. What are Sub-Components? Sub-components are individual parts of a larger composition. These ...

• Setting a default email address for working in offline mode

  When working in offline mode in BIMcollab Zoom, your email address is used to identify you as a user when creating and editing issues. When you are connected to BIMcollab Nexus, the email address of the logged in user is used for all modifications. ...

• IFC and Point cloud sharing in BIMcollab Zoom without using BIMcollab Nexus

  We recommend an online workflow to combine and view multiple files (IFC and Point clouds) in a project, so the whole team works with the latest version of the projectfiles and communicates at one central spot online in BIMcollab Nexus. This ensures ...

• Force the dimension tool to measure from point to point

  By default, the dimension tool will automatically measure the perpendicular distance between two selected elements (for example, between a point and an edge). If you want the measurement to be made between the two points you have clicked, you can ...

• Define the orbit rotation point by clicking on an object

  When navigating the 3D view in orbit mode, you can click and hold to rotate the model around a point. Two options are possible to define the position of the center of rotation: the center of the 3D view, or a point that you choose by clicking. This ...