CloudCompare forum

I would like to bring together two unrelated point clouds and position one within the other.

1) I have a roadway.
2) I have a vehicle (the vehicle was scanned in a completely different location)
3) I would like to merge the vehicle with the roadway cloud, positioning the vehicle on the roadway (aligning it to location on the roadway).

For example, I would like to see a top down view of the roadway while moving the vehicle over the top the location I would like to align it to. Right now, the two files, when loaded together, are extremely far apart.

Hi,

you should be able to do all this:

• if both clouds are very far apart, then first select both of them and use 'Edit > Synchronize'
• then as you suggest, you can place the camera as you wish (you can use the predefined camera positions or the fine tuning sliders in the 'Camera settings' if necessary)
• then select only the car and use the 'Translate/rotate' tool (the 'arrows' icon on the right of the 'scissors' icon in the main toolbar). This tool lets you manually move the selected entities relatively to the other ones (i.e. non selected)
• eventually select both clouds again and use the 'Edit > fuse' tool to create one unique cloud

After that, if you need very high accuracy you can use the align/registration tools and the distance computation tool to check the result, but it will be of course a little bit more tricky.