Measure and cut
Measure distance, area and volume
Pick points for coordinates and distances, trace a polygon for an area, and measure a volume in three clicks’ worth of stages - trace the base, set the height of the prism, commit - and read both the extrusion and the material the points actually fill below its ceiling.
Measuring and keeping measurements are free. Putting kept measurements into a report is Pro.
Part of Free point cloud software, Gaussian splat to floor plan and CAD.
When to use it
Distances and areas for quick checks on site geometry. The volume tool for stockpiles, excavations, fill, and anything where the question is “how much material is inside this outline”, including under a roof or a canopy, which the ceiling keeps out of the answer.
Step by step
- Open the Measure tool from the tools dock at the bottom of the view. Choose a mode: Point (X, Y, Z), Distance (3D, horizontal and vertical), Area (surface area and perimeter of a traced polygon) or Volume.
- For a distance, click two points. The dock reads
3D … H … V …. Picking snaps to the points through the octree, and to the surface on a model. - For a volume, choose Volume and click around the foot of the material: at least three base points. Backspace removes the last point; Esc clears the measurement, and a second Esc leaves the tool.
- Right-click (or press Enter) to close the base. The prism is now extruded from it and follows the mouse.
- Move the mouse to set the height of the prism’s top. The card shows the PRISM volume (base area × height), the number of points INSIDE, and the MATERIAL TOP, drawn as a dashed green line at the 98th percentile of the heights inside. Fit to material puts the top at the material’s own top, below the first empty gap, so a roof or canopy above is left out; Backspace re-opens the base.
- Click to commit the height (or press Set height). The result shows NET (fill minus cut), FILL (material above the base plane) and CUT (below it), the identity line
base area × mean height = volume, the EXTRUSION you drew and its CEILING, the COVERAGE of the boundary, and a SECTION profile. - Adjust after the fact: the CEILING can be dragged, fitted to the material again, or removed with No ceiling (everything above the base counts). Say what the points above the ceiling are: above: left out (a roof or canopy over the material, the default) or above: fills to it (the same solid continuing up, such as a building or tank taller than the prism, whose column then counts as full to the ceiling). BASE switches between Fitted to picks, Level at lowest pick and Level at mean pick.
- Press Keep to add the measurement to the session’s list. Kept measurements go into the report.
What it was measured at
The volume is integrated over up to 8 million points, and the result says when it sampled. COVERAGE reports the share of the boundary that had points: 90 % or more reads well covered, below 50 % reads mostly empty: this is extrapolated across holes.
Why the volume is measured in a prism
A base polygon alone does not say where material stops. On an open site the answer is “at the top of the pile”, but under a shed roof, a canopy or a conveyor, “everything above the base” counts the roof. The prism fixes the question before the integral runs: the base says where the material stands, the ceiling says where it ends, and the panel reports both the box you drew and what the points actually fill inside it. The identity line (base area × mean height) lets you check the answer against your own sense of the site in two seconds.
Limits, stated
- Two numbers, on purpose: the extrusion is the prism you drew; the material volume is what the points fill inside it, below the ceiling. A stockpile under a roof is measured to the stockpile, not to the roof.
- The two readings of above the ceiling differ by the whole height of the prism. A building clipped at 20 m reads close to empty with left out (its interior has no points below the roof) and close to footprint × 20 m with fills to it. The tool asks rather than guesses.
- A base traced across a hole in the scan is extrapolated across the hole, and COVERAGE says so. Treat anything below 90 % as approximate.
- A base fitted to three tilted picks is tilted; the card shows the tilt as a percentage. Use Level at lowest pick for a level datum.
- There is no polyline mode; use successive distances, or Area for a perimeter.
Related questions
How large a point cloud can it handle?
The limit is the disk, not the memory. The index is built out of core with bounded RAM and memory-mapped back: 43.5 million points open in about 1.2 s, and a 127.8 million point, 7.9 GB E57 in about 22 s. Very large clouds are classified in tiles automatically.
What does the free Viewer include?
Viewing, importing, every process that runs in the viewer, and converting a file back out. That covers classification, segmentation, the ground filter, measurement, sections, meshing, the scene graph, the floor plan preview and change detection, with no trial clock and no account. The four trained classifiers ship in every build.
More in the FAQ.