The Action Tab is the fourth tab in the Point Cloud Manager. It is here where all data extraction, as well as virtual surveying, is done in Carlson Point Cloud. There must be a currently open scene with 3D data for the controls in the action page to be enabled; otherwise they will be ghosted out.
Actions that can be taken with a scene are broken up into five different Panels: Selection Set, Edit, Transform, Create, and Extract. These categories are arranged such that operations that you would typically do first are at the top of the page, for instance, you must select the data you wish to modify before hiding any of it, or if you're going to transform the data you would perform transformations before you extract any of it.
The CTRL Key Setting controls how selection is done in the scene window. The default is use CTRL Key to Pick. This means the user must hold the CTRL key down and left click in the scene to select point or create points, polylines or text. The other option is Use CTRL Key to Navigate. This option allows the user to simply left click to make selections in the scene
The four radio buttons at the top of the Selection Set panel operate as two sets and determine the behavior of the selection methods (Individual, Rectangle, Polyline and Inclusion).
Add/Remove determines whether the objects that pass the criteria of the selection method are added or removed from the current selection set.
Inside/Outside determines whether to perform the selection operation on all entities inside or outside the drawn rectangle/polyline.
There are four selection modes:
Individual, in which every mouse click attempts to select the object currently under the cursor, useful for precision selection of individual points.
Rectangle, in which the user clicks a base point and a second point that defines the opposite corners of a selection rectangle.
Polyline in which the user clicks several times to define the shape of the polyline and right-clicks to close the polyline.
Inclusion in which the user selects a polyline previously drawn in the scene using the create Polyline command.
There are also four global selection buttons:
All, which selects all entities in the scene.
None, which deselects all entities in the scene
Invert, which inverts the current selection set within the scene.
Elevation, The user specifies a maximum and minimum elevation and the selection set is built from points between the specified elevations. Points outside the elevation range are ignored.
The Edit panel contains controls for modifying the currently visible set of points.
The Information button displays a properties dialog with some general statistical information about the current selection set, including the number of points selected, ranges of their positions, and ranges of the color and intensity values.
The Delete button deletes the selected points from the scene and from the objects that contain them, if you delete some points from a scan, or faces from a mesh, you will be prompted for an action to take with the modified object's data after all scenes containing that object are closed.
Modify existing will save the changes to the
original object (deleting points from the object as it is on disk,
which cannot be undone).
Create New will create a new object to save the
modified data and is typically the safer option because the
original data is still available if needed.
Discard Changes will close the scene without
saving your changes (deletions).
The Hide button temporarily hides the current
selection set, which can help isolate the current area of interest
without making permanent changes to the dataset.
Show All undoes all hide operations and will
display everything in the scene again.
Image allows the user to drape an image over a mesh.
Smooth and Clean are functions performed on meshes only.
The Transform panel contains several functions that relate specifically to transforming the current selection set. This allows for minor adjustments to be made to the selection set if it seems that data isn't properly aligned or if you want to move individual coordinate points to different locations.
Translate allows you to define a translation of the current data set by selecting a base start point and an ending point. Activating the translation mode will bring up a new panel in the action page that displays the current base point and end point of the translation as well as the resulting vector. A first click in the viewer will define the base point for the vector of translation and a second click will define the end point of that vector.
Rotations allow you to rotate the current selection set with three clicks. The first click will define the center of rotation, and the angle of rotation will be determined from angle between the vectors made between the second and third clicks and the first click.
Scaling is performed with two clicks. The first click defines the origin of the scaling operation, and the magnitude of the vector between the first and second vectors determines the magnitude of the scale operation.
Sequence brings up a separate dialog that allows you to define a sequence of transformations and allows you more precision than allowed by the other three methods.
Initially, the dialog will have no transformations specified, to add a transformation, press the +button. After pressing this button another dialog will pop up with all the options for the new transformation to add to the sequence.
There are four kinds of transformations you can choose from in the list box: Translation, Rotation, Scaling, and Advanced. Each of the simple translations are the same as they are in the transform panel, only you must provide the actual numbers instead of interacting via mouse-clicks. The advanced transformation allows you to specify a transformation matrix to be applied to data. After clicking the check button you should be taken back to the Transform Selection Set dialog. From here you can add more transformations, modify the currently selected one by pressing the green i button, delete them by pressing the red x button, or change their order of application to the data using the green arrow buttons. Press the check button in the Transform Selection Set dialog to apply the transformations to the selected data.
Similar to the Delete button in the Edit panel, when a cloud has been transformed and is about to be closed by the program, the user will be asked by the program for the desired course of action. The Cloud Modified dialog will pop up with the option to either save the changes to the already existing item, create a new object with the changes made, or just throw away the changes.
The Create Panel allows you to manually create new project items either by specifying their points in the viewer (Point Polyline and Text) or by creating a new data set from the currently selected data points (Cloud, Mesh and Grid).
Clicking Point in the Create Panel will set the Current Mode to Point Creation and display the four panels that comprise the point creation mode.
Clicking Polyline in the Create Panel will set the Current Mode to Polyline Creation and display the four panels that comprise the polyline creation mode.
Clicking Cloud will bring up the standard Point Cloud creation dialog. In this case it will create a cloud with all the selected data in the current scene.
Clicking Mesh in the Create Panel will bring up the standard Mesh Creation dialog. In this case it will create a mesh with all the selected data in the current scene. However, one minor change is that the Normal panel has a From Scene option radio button which will make the mesh pull in its normal from the current camera's view direction. This allows you to view a scene of data and find an optimal viewing angle that gives the best results as a normal for the mesh.
Clicking Text in the Create Panel will set the Current Mode to Text Creation and display the two panels that comprise the text creation mode.
Clicking Grid in the Create Panel will bring up the standard Grid Creation dialog. In this case it will create a Grid with all the selected data in the current scene.
Each of the Data Extraction functions is designed for use on a fully processed mesh object. Results for these functions not used with a mesh may not be accurate. Because of their complexity each extraction function, Extract Breaklines, Extract Contours, Extract Profile, Extract Section and Extract Bare Earth has its own help pages.