Cyclone to Autocad 2011 file conversion

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Re: Cyclone to Autocad 2011 file conversion

Post by Matthias »

Graeme,

I think this is how Tilo understood and answered your question.
Your clients do not have to buy any software (besides being on AutoCAD 2011). They will need a PCG file from you, what they can attach to their DWG's. So if you create the PCG from your scan projects and deliver this to your clients all should be fine.

Of course AutoCAD/autodesk should come with a direct import for a Cyclone project and Leica should have a PCG export from Cyclone to make it comfortable for their users. May be both wait for the other to move first. :?:
We just made these conversion routines to help our clients, it is not a big deal.

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Re: Cyclone to Autocad 2011 file conversion

Post by stevenramsey »

Matthias wrote:Graeme,

They will need a PCG file from you, what they can attach to their DWG's. So if you create the PCG from your scan projects and deliver this to your clients all should be fine.

Matthias
As Autodesk are the only people that can make the PCG file and have not supplied the codec to anyone other than Kubit which means additional software purchase. you would have thought that they would have allowed for simple ASCI based file import, LAS is an industry standard for Ariel data, the rest are vendor specific propriety formats, they seem to have gone out of there way to isolate the source of all the data they are so proud of saying they can now read,

Remember Plain Autocad and Civil/Map use different engines and can import different types of data.

I am sure we will see Autodesk adding additional import formats with there subscription service and maybe Scanner manufacturers will add additional exports. PCG may be a great new storage format but with no way to get the data in what is the point of Autocad having pointcloud capabilities .
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Re: Cyclone to Autocad 2011 file conversion

Post by Tilo »

stevenramsey wrote: As Autodesk are the only people that can make the PCG file
That's perfectly true.
stevenramsey wrote: and have not supplied the codec to anyone other than Kubit
And this is not true. We don't have the codec or format specification at all, we simply use the sparse API they (Autodesk) currently (and publicly :!:) deliver.

I fully agree with all of you which are wondering how Autodesk could not provide a simple ASCII import, we were wondering as well. But that's the fact - at least in the 2011 version.
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Re: Cyclone to Autocad 2011 file conversion

Post by stevenramsey »

Ok here is a challenge to the pointcloud coding Gurus out there if Autodesk have made the ability to create the pointcloud format in there publicly? available API how about a free plugin that will import the ASCII data.
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Tilo
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Re: Cyclone to Autocad 2011 file conversion

Post by Tilo »

Go ahead, here is all you need to know:
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/in ... eID=123112
http://liblas.org/raw-attachment/wiki/W ... at_v11.pdf
http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/iostream/ifstream/

Maybe this is the information Graeme originally wanted to have, I don't think so...

However if anyone finds an easy - and free - way to convert the Cyclone data to PCG files, please let us know. In the meanwhile we should let this matter rest and going back to doing more serious things :)
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Re: Cyclone to Autocad 2011 file conversion

Post by JosephChumbley »

I believe you can thank a long standing feud between AutoDesk and Lieca for the lack of supported file formats, and a strong marketing push by Faro teaming up with Autodesk on a number of their internal programs for the formats they do support.
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Re: Cyclone to Autocad 2011 file conversion

Post by skerr »

Hi,

I beleive what Graeme wanted to know was this.......can we/how do we, export our Cyclone files into a format that can be read in AutoCad 2011?
From the answers given, there is no straight export/import option.
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Re: Cyclone to Autocad 2011 file conversion

Post by Leonardo.Inocencio »

Hello to all,

I downloaded the trial version of Autocad Map 3D 2011 to test the point cloud support. We use Cyclone and to try to make it work i installed PoinTools, imported and converted the PTS file to POD file, then exported to LAS file, a format available at the import format list in Autocad. Went to INSERT, POINTCLOUD and INDEX DATA. Tried both formats PCG and ISD but didn´t work. Someone had successfully imported a point cloud to Autocad from a diferent origin?

Thanks
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Re: Cyclone to Autocad 2011 file conversion

Post by Faraz »

We need to remove that LAS export from Pointools products, its not a standard LAS, it was a proposed LAS extension for terrestrial scan data but was never adopted.

We're going to take a look at how we can enable our users to convert a range of formats to work in AutoCAD. Despite having a product that plugs into AutoCAD ourselves which gives much better visual fidelity, performance and functionality it may be still something we do for users that decide they want to use the native AC support for point clouds.

btw. Users of the Bentley point cloud support in Microstation (currently in beta) already have a wide range of formats to choose from including generic ascii formats and hardware vendor specific formats.
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Re: Cyclone to Autocad 2011 file conversion

Post by CMounts »

For any Bentley users out there I can say that Pointools in MicroStation is pretty awesome. Far better than whatever AutoCAD is trying to do. Hopefully AutoCAD gets there stuff together though. Having decent native support for casual users will help all of us. Now if only I could have points in Revit...
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