CloudCompare forum

Hello,
I'm a master's student. I'm using M3C2 for my research.
I have read the wiki article and the author's article but I'm still confused with the output parameters setting.
One of output parameters is "project core point on #Cloud1、#Cloud2、Keep original positions" and the another optional is "use original cloud".
After conducting analyses with different settings and exporting the results as ASCII files, I noticed that only the X, Y, Z coordinates changed (albeit not significantly), while the M3C2_distance, Npoints, STD... remained constant across various settings.
Therefore, I have a few questions:

1. What does this setting mean?
2. How do I choose the setting optional?
3. What do X, Y and Z represent in the results? Do they mean the coordinate of core point on cloud1 or cloud2?

Thank you for your help.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/195489274 ... ed-public/

1. It's really to choose whether the distances should be displayed on one cloud or the other (i.e. on the reference or the compared cloud for instance). And 'Keep original positions' means that you keep the result on the core points only (i.e. without re-projecting the values on the other points if the core points are a subsampled version of the original cloud, or even a totally different cloud (as it's a thing that you can do with M3C2 - to use core points aligned on a grid for instance).
2. it's really up to you I guess
3. See 1?

I see. Thank you very much Daniel.

Riley