CloudCompare forum

Hi,

Where is the precise location of the rotation center when using this tool? Is it the center of the bounding box? Are there any other functionalities in CloudCompare that allow me to choose where the rotation center is? In my case I just want to rotate about the point cloud's origin, i.e., I am trying to level a point cloud while preserving the location of the origin.

Thank you.

Well, almost.

You can create a 'Coordinate system' entity with 'File > Primitive factory' (last tab).

You can either set the right matrix if you know it (it's typically the position of the 'sensor' entity if there's one attached to the cloud) or et the center position as the 3 first values of the 4th column of the matrix, or even manually positon the coordinate system with the 'Edit > Translate/Rotate' tool.

Then, select the cloud you want to align, and open the 'Edit > Translate/Rotate' tool. Click on the 'Advanced' button. In the 'Rotate Around' drop down menu, you should see an entry corresponding to the Coordinate System entity. Once selected, you can change the 'Rotation Axis Selection' option to 'Reference Axis'. This will then let you rotate about X, Y and Z of this coordinate system, and about the origin of the coordinate system. The only limitation is that you can only rotate about X, Y and Z separately, so you'll have to do it step by step (or cleverly orient the coordinate system).

Interesting... Thanks for the information. I ended up just exporting to Rhino, transforming, and then brought it back into CloudCompare. I will keep this info in mind for next time though.