Point clouds have gained popularity throughout the AEC industry as a fast and accurate way to collect data on existing site conditions. However, they are also difficult to manage and require specialized hardware, software, and training. This is because people not only manipulate them, but accurately gauge what is being viewed against reality.
1. Storage Point Clouds
Very large point cloud data, often several gigabytes, if not terabytes, quickly takes up valuable space on organizations’ servers. This makes data access an issue for third parties, contractors or other external users who need to work on the project. Because the data is stored on the company’s servers, and requires the permission and setup of the IT team to do so.
2. View/navigate
It is very difficult to get an accurate picture from your point cloud data of exactly what you are looking at, and if you are not a trained point cloud expert, it can be difficult for you to navigate the data. Furthermore, you need a powerful PC and the right 3D software to manipulate the point cloud.
3. Share/Distribute
It’s a laborious process to share point cloud data with stakeholders. People have to use hard disks and Dropbox to deliver it. This is also time consuming. With uploading and downloading or international shipping causing data recipients to wait up to several days before they can start working on it.
4. Security Point Clouds Data
Once you send the hard disk that has reached the recipient, you cannot keep track of who is viewing and sharing the data. It is also possible for people to misplace data or hard drives to fail in transit or at their destination.
5. Collaboration
It’s not easy to share data. Usually, team members have to work in the data warehouse. Meanwhile, the stakeholders are all working on individual data sets without a linked method. The usual workaround is that you send the point cloud to different parties at the same time via a hard disk or a file sharing service. However, there is also the issue of version control management. If the parties have made amendments, how do you track all of those changes? How will humans aggregate and manage these changes to ensure accuracy and transparency?
Home3ds provides Point Cloud and 3D modeling services to its customers. We work on the Point Cloud, Scan-to-BIM. Contact us now to get more information.
