CloudCompare forum

Primary Issues:
Is there any easy way to ensure I am tracing a polyline so that all selected points remain in the same plane?
Also, when rotating/translating meshes is there any way to line it up perfectly with the coordinate system (maybe define a normal and then use the normal to align the mesh)?

Background:
I am trying to shrink wrap a polyline at various sections along a cylinder mesh in order to sample points from the polyline to calculate the centroid. On that note, if anyone has better methods for calculating the centroid of irregularly shaped segments let me know

Secondary Issue:
On a side note when I try to trace a polyline around the cylinder I often get sections of the polyline that jump through the middle and then continue following the cylinder's surface.

Thank you!

About the last (secondary) issue: I believe this has been fixed very recently (like on Friday... can you try the latest 2.11.alpha version?)

Otherwise, if you are trying to pick points (or extract points) inside a plane, why not using the "Clipping box/Cross section" tool? (then you'll be able to sample points on the mesh slice for instance, etc.). Or did I misunderstood something?

I'm running it on a Mac so I cannot yet try out the latest version :/

Additionally, thanks a lot, I forgot I was able to sample points. Taking cross sections will be much easier.

However, this leads me to reiterate one of my questions - is there any way to ensure that a mesh is exactly in line with the coordinate system? (I'm working with normal and abnormal y-joints so I need to prove I am positioning it correctly).

Thanks again

Not sure how to do that... What would you expect for instance?

You could pick several points on the shape (with the Point List picking tool) and then fit a plane on them and check that this plane is currently oriented?

I was originally thinking if there was anyway to generate normal(s) on a surface and then line those normals up with the coordinate grid

Oh, then no, sorry.