SBF

Introduction

The SBF (Simple Binary File) format, is meant to ease the export and external processing of big point clouds.

While the BIN format of CloudCompare can store about anything created or loaded in CloudCompare, it is complex to decode (as it is a serialized stream of what is loaded in the memory - the only way to properly open a BIN file is to use QCC_DB_LIB).

Thus, the SBF format has been created to store data in a Binary file with a very simple structure, and to store some more meta-data in a text file next to the binary file.

Specifications

Binary file

Header

Total length: 64 bytes

Bytes	Description	Value / comment
0-1	SBF header flag	42 42
2-9	Point count (Np)	8 bytes unsigned integer
10-11	Scalar field count (Ns)	2 bytes unsigned integer
12-19	X coordinate shift (should be added to all 32bit coordinates stored in the file)	64bit floating point value ('double')
20-27	Y coordinate shift (should be added to all 32bit coordinates stored in the file)	64bit floating point value ('double')
28-35	Z coordinate shift (should be added to all 32bit coordinates stored in the file)	64bit floating point value ('double')
36-63	Reserved for later	0

Body

All values are saved with 32bit floating point precision (= 'float').

For each point (1-Np):

Bytes	Description	Value / comment
0-3	X coordinate	32bit floating point value ('float')
4-7	Y coordinate	32bit floating point value ('float')
8-11	Z coordinate	32bit floating point value ('float')
12-15	Scalar value (SF #1)	32bit floating point value ('float')
16-19	Scalar value (SF #2)	32bit floating point value ('float')
...	...
12-15 + k * 4 (k in [0 ; Ns[)	Scalar value (SF #k)	32bit floating point value ('float')