Introduction

Point clouds have gained significant traction, with specialized service providers dedicated to collecting data and generating them. However, taking the next step isn’t always as straightforward as one might expect (see blog My Problem with 3D Point Clouds). Depending on the intended application and the number of points—a crucial factor—it can sometimes feel nearly impossible to extract anything useful. Fortunately, several workflows can transform a point cloud into something far more practical.

Extracting Point Coordinates from a Point Cloud

While a raw point cloud might not always be directly usable, its point coordinates often are. Many software applications support importing points with X, Y, and Z values, making this a viable alternative. Autodesk Recap Pro, part of the AEC Collection, facilitates this process. By opening the point cloud in Recap Pro, expanding the Home menu, and selecting Export, you can save the file in one of four formats. The format of interest here is .pts.

A .pts file can be opened in Notepad, where all point coordinates are listed. The first three columns are the most relevant, as they contain the X, Y, and Z values. Copying and pasting this data into Excel places each line into a single cell, so the Text to Columns function is necessary to separate the values. Since the data is space-separated, selecting the Fixed Width option ensures proper formatting.

Once the three coordinate columns are split, the file can be saved as a .csv, ready for use in other applications. Further modifications can always be made within the spreadsheet as needed.