Cleaning up (deleting) unwanted points from individual scan stations

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JohnNPS8
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Cleaning up (deleting) unwanted points from individual scan stations

Post by JohnNPS8 »

Hello,

Relatively new user to RealWorks here. I'm having difficulty understanding the proper workflow for simply deleting unwanted points.

I currently understand the workflow outlined in the user guide and help document (Segmentation and Remove Points from TZF Scans), but I feel that it is overlooking a key component of other registration programs. Namely, the ability to remove points from each individual scan station, rather than from the larger registered scan.

It is so much easier to remove points from a single scan station due to the points all originating from the same spot. RealWorks seems to want me to do this from the registered point cloud, making it much harder for me to clip out the unwanted data by carefully aligning my views and doing smaller chunks at a time.

The registered point cloud appears as the "Project Cloud" when in the Production mode, but I can't expand it to show the individual scan stations below. I assumed that if I could do this, I could just visually toggle the scans on and off to facilitate Segmentation, but I don't see this functionality.

Perhaps I am misunderstanding something core to the way RealWorks organizes its data in the Project Tree?
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Re: Cleaning up (deleting) unwanted points from individual scan stations

Post by vincent denis »

Hello John!

You have a trick to delete data from just 1 station (like mirror).

1 - Go to the Scan Explorer, Choose your station, and choose option "Extract Point" (my Realworks is in French, so i hope the translation is good)
Make a polygon, unselect "All stations" and at the bottom choose "Create on Realworks" -> Close Scan Explorer

2 - Go to Production panel (not sure about the translation) and now you have a new point cloud objet, which corresponds to your mirror.

3 - Select them and delete from TZF

Hope this solution is what you were looking for
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Re: Cleaning up (deleting) unwanted points from individual scan stations

Post by TMillington »

John

Once you've got a registered 'Project Cloud' you can then break it down into individual scans by opening the Sampling tool and choosing the scan-based sampling option. You'll need to select/deselect an individual scan each time so it can be a tedious process (depending on number of scans) but the end result is what you're looking for.

The alternative is similar to Vincent's, which is to go to Scan Explorer and then extract all the points for each station in turn, which will create a point cloud in realworks for each scan.
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Re: Cleaning up (deleting) unwanted points from individual scan stations

Post by JohnNPS8 »

Thanks for the responses. Here are my thoughts and comments. I'd appreciate any follow up or opinions you might have on my ignorance :D
Vincent DENIS wrote: Tue Sep 12, 2017 7:25 am Hello John!

You have a trick to delete data from just 1 station (like mirror).

1 - Go to the Scan Explorer, Choose your station, and choose option "Extract Point" (my Realworks is in French, so i hope the translation is good)
Make a polygon, unselect "All stations" and at the bottom choose "Create on Realworks" -> Close Scan Explorer

2 - Go to Production panel (not sure about the translation) and now you have a new point cloud objet, which corresponds to your mirror.

3 - Select them and delete from TZF

Hope this solution is what you were looking for
Thanks for that walk through. I was able to repeat the process successfully, but find myself perplexed with this workflow. I can see why this might be the best solution for removing mirror noise, but I prefer to do it in 3D.

If I understand correctly, Extracting the points from Scan Explorer seems to make a copy of the data boxed out. Then, when you select that newly created point cloud object and run the Remove points from TZF Scans command, it treats it as a sort of boolean subtraction from the main TZF Scan. Even after the command is finished, you still see the unwanted point cloud object in the 3d view, which is very confusing. One assumes that if you delete something, you won't continue to see it in front of you. I must go back to the TZF and create a new sampled scan in order to confirm that those points were in fact removed?

I also thought that if I went back to the Scan Explorer, that it would highlight in red the areas that have already been removed, but this does not seem to be the case. What is the point of the PNG file generated in the project folder, if not for this?
TMillington wrote: Tue Sep 12, 2017 9:34 am John

Once you've got a registered 'Project Cloud' you can then break it down into individual scans by opening the Sampling tool and choosing the scan-based sampling option. You'll need to select/deselect an individual scan each time so it can be a tedious process (depending on number of scans) but the end result is what you're looking for.

The alternative is similar to Vincent's, which is to go to Scan Explorer and then extract all the points for each station in turn, which will create a point cloud in realworks for each scan.
I think this workflow is closer to what I was looking for, probably because the program gives me better feedback on the steps as I execute them.

In my opinion, having to sample the Project Cloud by the Scan Based method feels counter intuitive because from a user perspective, the program should already know the difference between scan stations since I just got done registering them. I wish the Project Cloud by default had the scan stations nested below it, and that they could be toggled on and off. I also wish I could be doing this step in the Registration panel, because I feel like I'm doing this step late in the game when I'm in the Production panel.

I still think there are far too many clicks required to simply delete points. I made a new group folder to manage all the new point cloud objects, and called it Points to Delete. This is fine, but it the term "Segmentation" doesn't strike me as the go to command for deletion of points.

And to be clear this isn't deleting points from the TZF files, rather from the newly sampled scans that I generated by scan station, correct?

Thanks again for the responses!
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Re: Cleaning up (deleting) unwanted points from individual scan stations

Post by vincent denis »

JohnNPS8 wrote: Tue Sep 12, 2017 8:16 pm

In my opinion, having to sample the Project Cloud by the Scan Based method feels counter intuitive because from a user perspective, the program should already know the difference between scan stations since I just got done registering them. I wish the Project Cloud by default had the scan stations nested below it, and that they could be toggled on and off. I also wish I could be doing this step in the Registration panel, because I feel like I'm doing this step late in the game when I'm in the Production panel.

I still think there are far too many clicks required to simply delete points. I made a new group folder to manage all the new point cloud objects, and called it Points to Delete. This is fine, but it the term "Segmentation" doesn't strike me as the go to command for deletion of points.

And to be clear this isn't deleting points from the TZF files, rather from the newly sampled scans that I generated by scan station, correct?

Thanks again for the responses!
Hi,

Yeah your right, with my method, it's necessary to delete generated scan, to generate a new one with TZF.
So you have to do that at first, before starting calcul ..... (not user friendly at all !!!!)

And for second procedure, right again! You just delete wrong point cloud from sampled scan, and not from TZF. I think Trimble have big work to do on this part !
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