Since I’ve started working with Cyclone 3DR, I have been amazed at how often Leica is able to update this software while keeping it efficient. When Leica purchased 3DR from Technodigit years ago, I thought maybe they would just revamp the interface and call it a day but that hasn’t been the case. It appears they have added significant upgrades with every version they have released. The 2023 version is one of the biggest upgrades in a long time in my opinion.
The first item to be improved is the Auto-Classification tool. This tool is not brand new of course but it has been upgraded to work with different categories. There is a new UAV category and new indoor and outdoor selections as well. You might be thinking you can classify in Register 360 Plus now and you would be correct, but I think Cyclone 3DR provides more flexibility over working with the data once it is classified. Classifying even a small project can take some time but compared to manually separating the point cloud out to clean it, that time is well worth it. The images below are a before and after the classification.
Notice the walls are one color and the floors are another etc. This will allow the user to explode the entire point cloud by class and either clean unwanted points out of the cloud or to isolate a group of points for analysis.
If you have been following the software changes Leica has been going through over the past few months, you know they are no longer going to sell Cyclone Register CORE. I believe this is just the beginning of their changes to the CORE products that have been in Leica’s HDS software lineup for many years. The article isn’t meant to cover all the changes just the changes to Cyclone 3DR. A major change to the 3DR product in the 2023 version is Leica including the Virtual Surveyor tool that has long been a part of the survey module Leica has in the CORE product. Before anyone gets too worked up, the survey module has not been removed from the CORE products just added to the 3DR survey module. Some of you may be wondering what this Virtual Surveyor is. Well, it is exactly as it reads. The Virtual Surveyor allows us to perform tasks we would ordinarily do in the field with traditional survey equipment virtually in our computers using point cloud data. The tool allows us to create individual points, series of points or even polyline data. Customized survey codes can be created manually or into a text file and imported as needed. Once the survey is complete, the points and/or linework and be exported to a LandXML file and imported into other software packages such as Civil 3D.
Moving a point cloud to a different location or aligning that point cloud with a BIM model is often a difficult task in many software packages. 3DR has updated and included new tools to move point cloud data to a different location. One of those tools is an updated Free Move tool which allows us to easily grab an axis (X,Y or Z) and move the cloud (or any other object) along that axis. Utilizing this tool, we are also able to grab and move an entire object by a plane and move it anywhere we want. This isn’t the most accurate method, but it does have time and place in some workflows. If you are looking to move a point cloud to a BIM model, there is a more accurate way to do so. This method allows us to move either the point cloud or the BIM model. To move either way it requires a surface and a corner to move to.
Some of you reading this right now have never use 3DR and really don’t know what it is all about. As you can see, 3DR is more than a meshing tool. There are survey tools and BIM tools as well. I think the real power behind 3DR is it’s ability to perform analysis on different types of data for a variety of reasons. For example, the latest version of 3DR can display a gridded inspection. Previously, we could do an inspection such as Floor Levelness or Floor Flatness and place labels around the areas we believed were the most egregious. Now, with a gridded inspection, we can perform the same analysis but show a grid and a defined distance and rotation to show the various levels of defamation.
Before Gridded Inspection:
After Gridded Inspection:
We can add more labels or take labels away if needed. The view above is hiding some of the labels because they overlap. If we zoom in, they will appear.
The last new feature I will discuss in this forum is 3DRs ability to connect to Cyclone Field 360. This means we can take data stored in Field 360 and import it directly into Cyclone 3DR. You might be thinking why we will do that if we need to register in Cyclone Register 360 Plus first. If you haven’t seen it yet, one of the new features in Field 360 is the ability to close loops and triangulate scans to better register our data before ever getting to Register 360. I would personally like to fine tune my registration in Register 360 Plus but that is just me. For those of you wondering where the Connect to BLK feature went, it was replaced by the Field 360 tool because Field 360 supports multiple sensors. All sensor data that is compatible with the Field 360 app can be imported to 3DR.
I hope this blog post has been useful and welcome all feedback. Happy scanning!
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