PNTS(nged)

💖 PNTS(nged) 💖

Okay so welcome to the PNTS(nged) page from the BRL-CAD User Commands manual — this is the one about making/writing/generating pnts point-cloud primitives. If you're here, you're about to vibe with point clouds in BRL-CAD, and that's iconic.

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🎀 NAME 🎀

pnts — creates/writes/generates a "pnts" (i.e. point cloud) primitive.

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

pnts {subcommand} {subcommand arguments}

read [-f [xyzijksrgb]] [-u unit] [--size #] {input_file} {pnts_obj}

write [-p #] [--ply] {pnts_obj} {output_filepnts}

gen [-t #] [--surface] [--grid] [--rand] [--sobol] [--max-pnts] [--max-time] {obj} {output_pnts}

tri [unit] [-s #]

tri spsr

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

This command lets you create/write/generate pnts primitives, bestie. See also the make_pnts command.

Most pnts subcommands accept -h or —help to print subcommand-specific usage details. That's your built-in cheat sheet, no cap.

🌸 SUBCOMMANDS 🌸

💖 read 💖

Reads point data from an input file.

• -f [xyzijksrgb] — specifies the format of input data.
• -u unit — specifies the units — either a named unit (e.g. in), a number, or a unit expression (.15mm). Assumes millemeters by default (translation: millimeters, bestie).
• —size # / --size # — sets the default size for each point (default is 0).

💅 write 💅

Writes point data to an output file.

• -p # — specifies the number of significant digits (default 17).
• —ply / --ply — writes output in PLY format.

✨ gen ✨

Generates a point set from the object and stores the set in a "pnts" primitive.

• -t # — specifies the sampling grid spacing (in mm).
• —surface / --surface — saves only first and last points along a ray.
• —grid / --grid — samples using a gridded ray pattern.
• —rand / --rand — samples using a random Marsaglia ray pattern on the bounding sphere.
• —sobol / --sobol — samples using a Sobol pseudo-random Marsaglia ray pattern on the bounding sphere.
• —max-pnts / --max-pnts — specifies the maximum number of pnts to return per non-grid sampling method.
• —max-time / --max-time — specifies the maximum time to spend per method (in seconds) when using non-grid sampling.

🎀 tri [unit] 🎀

Generates unit or scaled triangles for each pnt in a point set. If no normal information is present, uses origin at avg of all set points to make normals.

• -s # — specifies the scale factor to apply to unit triangles — scales the triangle to size with the triangle centered on the original point.

🌈 tri spsr 🌈

Apply the Screened Poisson Surface Reconstruction methodology to generate a mesh from the point cloud. See the -h option for the various controls available for this methodology.

💫 EXAMPLES 💫

Example 1. Read a point cloud file

mged>pnts read -f xyz -u in —size 1 pointsfile.txt point_cloud.s1

Creates a pnts primitive named point_cloud.s1 using the data file pointsfile.txt where the data file only contains the point coordinates listed in the order xyz. The units of the file data is in and the default point size is set to 1.0 (in current model units). Slay.

Example 2. Write a points file from a pnts primitive.

mged>pnts write -p 3 point_cloud.s1 pointsfile.txt

Write the XYZ coordinates of the pnts primitive point_cloud.s1 to a file called pointsfile.txt and give 3 significant digits.

👑 AUTHOR 👑

BRL-CAD Team

🐛 BUG REPORTS 🐛

Reports of bugs or problems should be submitted via electronic mail to devs@brlcad.org.

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Later bestie — footer tea: BRL-CAD source/version vibes plus the PNTS(nged) manual name, and there’s no date printed in the original footer. That’s the whole sign-off situation 🫶💅