A digital twin is a virtual replica of a real-world space or physical asset. Digital twins reflect the current asset condition and can be continuously updated with data from its physical counterpart. Digital twins can create simulations and predict future behavior, streamline collaboration and optimize operations.

A point cloud is the raw material of a digital twin. Point clouds are created by panning a 3D scanner back and forth over walls, piping, pieces of equipment, vehicles and much more. The scanner head emits a laser beam or optical-spectrum light and detects the reflection. The scanner measures the timing and intensity of the reflection. It creates millions of points each with a unique position and orientation in space. Multiple passes of a scanner create a dense cloud of points, hence the name. While raw point clouds are rich sources of information, they are too big to use in a digital twin. Prevu3D turns these raw point clouds into actionable data.

Processing a point cloud with specialized computer software and hardware creates a polygon mesh. The software creates lines to connect each point to its adjacent points based on analysis of the position and orientation of each point. Adjacent points are joined by lines to form an array of tiny polygonal shapes. This array is a polygon mesh. The higher the density of the point cloud the more surface details appear on the mesh. A variety of data compression techniques can be applied to meshes to reduce the size of the mesh to content that users can interact with on wireless mobile devices, while preserving detail. Prevu3D has the best meshing solution on the market for digital twins.

Exporting captured scans​

Before uploading data, it is necessary to export the captured data depending on the capture device and software used.

The better the scanner and quality of the registration, the better the mesh quality and accuracy.

Depending on the supported capture device (listed below) used for scanning, the export settings will need to be curated to satisfy all requirements for the upload process.

For the highest quality that Prevu3D has to offer, it is recommended to either use the Leica RTC360, or FARO S Series.

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Point Cloud File Formats:

Structured

● Scan locations are known as they are captured from a fixed location (tripod scans)
● Includes point cloud and 360 panoramic imagery captured from tripod scan
● Highest density of points as all raw data is preserved
● Typical data structure of a registered scan with a tripod based scanner
● Faro, Leica, Recap, etc. can all export a structured e57 (Prevu3D file preference)
● Photospheres can be generated in Prevu3D

Unstructured

● No scan locations are known from the scan
● Typical data structure of a SLAM or mobile scanner, or a point cloud generated from photogrammetry
● Photospheres cannot be generated in Prevu3D
● If 360 panoramic imagery is collected on a SLAM scanner, additional information including image location and pose information is needed to align to the point cloud. The can be used for Photosphere generation

Unified

● Merged point cloud with no station information known
● No 360 panoramic images are available
● Similar to unstructured in general