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Creating a matrix of distance measurements with mesh to mesh distances

Posted: Thu Jan 07, 2021 5:00 am
by Legault
Hi all! I am currently doing a project comparing the distance between two surfaces using the mesh to mesh tool in CloudCompare. I know that if I create a point anywhere along the heatmap that the software formed, the the info box shows the exact distance measurement at that point. Is there a way I can create a matrix of these points at regular intervals (for example every half inch in the x-y plane) and export these values as a csv file?

I know this is a specific procedure, but I have seen such a function in other softwares for heatmaps but for slightly different applications.

Also as a side question, can I increase the size of the numbers on the color map legend?

Any assistance in solving this would be greatly appreciated!

Re: Creating a matrix of distance measurements with mesh to mesh distances

Posted: Thu Jan 07, 2021 1:39 pm
by daniel
1- You can only sample points (randomly) on the compared mesh. This will create a point cloud with interpolated distances that you can then export to CSV. By the way,

2- You can change the font sizes in the 'Display > Display options' menu

Re: Creating a matrix of distance measurements with mesh to mesh distances

Posted: Sun Jan 10, 2021 8:39 pm
by Legault
Thank you for the reply! Is what you're reffering to that you can export the information from 2D labels? How would you be able to do that?

Additionally, I thought of another possible solution I could use. If I have two point clouds representing two parallel surfaces, would it be possible to then create a third cloud that represents any variation in their profiles?

I'm not sure how to word this exactly, but the idea would be to compare the third cloud against a 2d plane and sample equidistant points along the plane to get the matrix I'm looking for.

Re: Creating a matrix of distance measurements with mesh to mesh distances

Posted: Sun Jan 10, 2021 8:57 pm
by Legault
Example.png
Example.png (3.83 KiB) Viewed 2520 times
Here's a poorly drawn 2D example of what I was attempting to explain. I want to combine two surface profiles (red and blue lines) to create a third cloud representative of their combined surface profile. I would be able to sample equidistant points along the black line (2D plane) to create a matrix of distances to the purple line (created point cloud 3).

Re: Creating a matrix of distance measurements with mesh to mesh distances

Posted: Tue Jan 12, 2021 10:59 pm
by daniel
It looks a little bit like what the '2.5D Volume' calculation tool is able to output. It computes the differences between two regularly sampled grids (which gives a grid with the distances between the two clouds). Then you can export this grid as a cloud.

And if you have meshes, you can convert them to dense point clouds first.

Re: Creating a matrix of distance measurements with mesh to mesh distances

Posted: Thu Jan 14, 2021 10:22 pm
by Legault
After playing around with the point densities and the 2.5D volume tool I achieved what I was looking to do. The point cloud generated worked out perfectly, thank you so much!