Point Cloud Software Faster

Leica Geosystems announces major releases of its flagship point cloud software applications: Cyclone 6.0; CloudWorx 4.0; and TruView 2.0. All applications now include intuitive, panoramic viewing of point clouds plus intuitive navigation of point clouds using \"key plans\" and scanner location icons. The release also features other productivity and ease-of-use advances.

Leica TruView is only a basic point cloud viewing/measurement/markup application. Processing point clouds into final client deliverables with Leica Cyclone and/or Leica CloudWorx is where many users spend most of their time; so, this latest major release extends TruView's intuitive viewing and navigation approach into the office workhorse applications - Leica Cyclone and Leica CloudWorx. It also expands TruView's capabilities, speeds office registration, and adds valuable forensic features. End user benefits will be a shorter learning curve and higher office productivity for creating client deliverables such as as-built drawings and models.

Within the software, a "key plan" is a digital map, drawing or image of a site, with icons that indicate each scanner location. Clicking on an icon automatically opens up a view of the point cloud from that location. The view can include an overlaid photo image from the scanner or an external camera. The opened view also includes icons of nearby scanner locations.

In Leica Cyclone and Leica CloudWorx, opened views can be 360ºx360º panoramic views or 3D views. A panoramic view virtually places the user where the scanner was. Observing a scanned scene from that viewpoint is completely intuitive, while full 3D viewing lets users virtually fly around a scene to get unique perspectives.

To easily navigate around a site, users can simply hop from one icon to another on the key plan, opening scan views as desired. Or users can click on scanner location icons visible within any opened view. Both of these intuitive navigation approaches can be used with Cyclone 6.0, CloudWorx 4.0 or TruView 2.0.

Leica CloudWorx 4.0 also features a new, fast-navigation aid for working with point cloud data in AutoCAD and MicroStation: a separate, panoramic, point cloud viewing window. This separate window not only makes it easier to comprehend point cloud images, but users can now also rotate and select point cloud data faster in the CAD window via the directly linked, highly responsive, panoramic viewing window.

Another navigation & viewing advance in Cyclone 6.0 and CloudWorx 4.0 is a "Quick Limit Box". Within the convenient panoramic viewing mode, this Quick Limit Box automatically isolates a selected area of a point cloud or model for uncluttered processing in a 3D viewing mode.

For registration and geo-referencing, Cyclone SCAN 6.0 and Cyclone REGISTER 6.0 feature automation advances that can save days in the office for large projects.

When using planar target registration with phase-based scanning (such projects can involve hundreds of scan targets), the software lets users find targets faster and automatically extract center coordinates. Previously, finding and extracting such targets was a manual process.

Cloud-to-cloud (i.e. point cloud overlap) registration algorithms are also now several times faster, plus one-third fewer picks are needed when using level-compensated, pulsed scanners (e.g., Leica ScanStation or Leica ScanStation2).

New Forensic Tools
In response to the growing demand for laser scanning in forensics, Leica Cyclone 6.0 includes new tools for analyzing bullet trajectories and for line-of-sight analyses, i.e. what someone could possibly see from any particular point in a scene.