Hi all
Want ask if and how its possible to import Faro PCDs ( PointClouds ), can export as XYZ or TXT files, or some special file format ? and render pointclouds + meshes ( FROST ? )
something like this dropbox.com/s/14x2reudn6eyst9/Rotunda01.png
its possible to render PCD of 1 bil of points ??
Hi!
Krakatoa MX v2.3.1 currently supports only PRT, BIN, RPC, CSV (or any form of text file with rows as particles and columns of data), and LAS files.
Frost supports these formats, too, but also includes a conversion utility that can turn a TXT, XYZ, PTS or PTX file to a PRT file.
Unfortunately, we don’t support PCD files.
So your best bet would be to export your data to one of these formats. A text file would be huge, but it would work as initial source to be converted to a binary compressed PRT file.
Regarding the number of points, it really depends on a few factors, mostly the RAM amount in your workstation. For example, Krakatoa can render a billion points with about 16 GB of RAM (one of my machines has 12 GB and it only goes to about 700 million points). For Frost, the amount of memory used during meshing is small, but the resulting TriMesh has to be passed on to 3ds Max and loaded in the Graphics Card memory. So if the mesh is too large and does not fit, the viewports will show nothing. Depending on how dense the point cloud is and what Frost settings are provided, the resulting mesh could have a billion+ polygons or only 100 million, so it is hard to tell without trying.
Thanx Bobo for fast reply
for clarity PCD is shorttcut for PointClouD - so not special fileformat.
So its enought if i have FROST and can convert and use PCDs in my 3D app, and render them out as points or convert to mesh. My Workstation have 256 GB Ram, adn decent GPU, but as i see will need something like 6-16 GB Video ram for that use…
Can somewhere find a tutorial for the import and conversion of PTS-PTX-LAS file to PRT ?
and a way to convert PCDs to mesh ??
Ah ok 
I assumed we missed yet another point cloud file format… 
In general, we recommend also using the license-free Evaluation version of Krakatoa MX in conjunction with Frost. The PRT Loader of Krakatoa MX lets you cull particles (for example to create sub-sets of particle files), convert data channels that are not labeled in the source file, and a lot more. Then pass the data to Frost for meshing. I asked Sales to give you the links for both Frost and Krakatoa, but you really should send us all the info we asked for 
There is no tutorial about LiDAR meshing right now, sounds like I will have to do something about it
Regarding the conversion, you simply pick a supported non-PRT file format (PCS, PCX, XYZ, TXT) in the File dialog of Frost, and it automatically pops up a converter dialog. Then it converts the file or file sequence to PRTs and adds the PRT to the list of files to load instead. LAS files are read natively by both Frost and Krakatoa without conversion to PRT, but it is possible to use Krakatoa to resave to PRT if needed.
Once you get the evaluation versions going, we can talk about the details…
