Measure and cut
2-D sections and orthoimages
Cut a slab through the cloud at any height, or a vertical section at any angle, see it live in 3-D, lock into an orthographic view to read it like a drawing, and save it as an image at full point density.
Cutting and viewing are free. Save PNG is Pro.
Part of Point cloud to floor plan, Gaussian splat to floor plan and CAD, Point cloud to CAD (DXF).
When to use it
To read a building like a plan before drawing one, to check a wall’s plumb or a floor’s level along a line, or to hand someone an orthoimage. For a finished, dimensioned drawing use the floor plan; the section tool is the quick look.
Step by step
- Press 2D sections & floor plans in the toolbar. A slab appears through the cloud and the 2D dock opens.
- Choose Floor plan (a horizontal cut, viewed from above) or Section (a vertical cut). For a section, pick N-S or E-W, or turn it with Rotate (0 to 180°).
- Set Height for a plan (it starts at 35 % of the scene’s height) or Offset for a section (it starts through the centre), and Slab for its thickness. The slab is shown live in 3-D.
- Press View 2D to lock into the orthographic view: drag to pan, wheel to zoom. Press Esc to leave it.
- Measure in the locked view with the Measure tool, exactly as in 3-D.
- Press Save PNG to write the view as an orthoimage. Close the tool with its 🗙.
What it was measured at
Orthoimages are written with the long edge at the GPU’s maximum texture size, clamped between 2048 and 8192 px, at full point density.
Limits, stated
- An orthoimage is a picture of the points, not a drawing: no walls are extracted and nothing is dimensioned. For that, use Process › Floor plan….
- The slab is a cut through what was scanned; a wall the scanner did not see is not there.
Related questions
Is the floor plan really automatic?
Yes. Process > Floor plan… builds the scene graph, finds the rooms by flooding the empty space, extracts the walls between their measured faces with their openings, and draws a dimensioned plan with room areas, a scale bar, a north arrow and a title block, plus sections and elevations placed where they show the most. On a 43 million point survey the whole set takes about a second. Nothing needs tracing by hand.
More in the FAQ.