HSPC (Hexagon Smart Point Cloud)

Introduction

HSPC is a powerful, robust format for handling point cloud data. In BricsCAD®, point clouds can be processed two ways:

• The classic point cloud cache format with all of its advantages: strong compression, best graphical representation of point cloud data.
• The HSPC format, a format created by the Hexagon research group, allows for the storage of metadata, per point, during or after pre-processing.

About HSPC

Although the HSPC format can result in slightly less appealing graphical representation (surfaces may appear less dense in some regions). However, the advantage of this format is that we are able to limit the displayed points based on the available metadata. If you choose this cache format to import a structured, classified point cloud, you will be able to:

• Show, create and edit regions in point clouds. This allows you to store any cropping you make on a point cloud. The regions are stored next to the cache, so they are available in any drawing you attach the point cloud to.
• Toggle the visibility of scan positions. You are no longer limited to show the entire registered point cloud (i.e., the sum of all fixed scan positions). You can choose to work only on the data of one or more scan positions, reducing the number of points displayed, and therefore hugely accelerating performance and avoiding the need to manually crop the point cloud to provide a performant, workable dataset.
• Use any classification inside the imported point cloud. Again, this allows the user to work on a limited data set. Currently, the predefined classes in LAS/LAZ format are supported. In the future we will allow adding classifications too.

You can choose the point cloud processing format in the BricsCAD Settings dialog, by defining the value for POINTCLOUDHSPC system variable. The default cache format is set to HSPC.