Point cloud zooming without Mouse scroll wheel?

How do I zoom? 2 finger swipe? I guess I have to go dig up my old mouse for this laptop? Is there an easier way without it? I tried clicking on the image, like with 3D, nothing.
Steve

Hi @Steve_Bright,

What laptop are you using?

Keep me posted,
Christina

Dell Vostro. There is no mouse scroll wheel.

Hi @Steve_Bright,

Are you able to scroll with your trackpad? I currently use a MacBook Air without a mouse and am able to zoom in and out using gestures on my trackpad.

Keep me posted,
Christina

What gesture should I make? Pinching does nothing. In 3D mode double clicking works. But not with the point cloud toggle switch on.

Hi @Steve_Bright,

I’m not too sure what gestures your laptop uses. I use the scrolling features for my MacBook Air, which is a swiping gesture with two fingers up and down the trackpad.

Cheers,
Christina

Enabled gestures on my mousepad Wow! Now I can zoom on point cloud. What is this for? It looks horrible, I’m sure it has some use?

@Steve_Bright,

I too have not figured out what to do with the point cloud. I just use the 3D model for all my maps: 3D elevation, slope, contours, tree identification.

Perhaps others here on the DroneDeploy forum can point out an interesting application for point clouds.

Regards,
Terry.

Hi @Steve_Bright and @SolarBarn,

The point cloud file is typically used in third-party CAD software for advanced analysis, such as performing 3D measurements. If you’re curious, you can check out this AutoCAD post about working with point clouds.

Hope this helps!

Cheers,
Stephanie

As a beginner here is what I’ve observed. The 3D OBJ export can have textures which make the results look like a picture that you can rotate. But then you can’t edit it in Rhino or Meshlab. So we remove the textures ending up with points and triangles without color. This is fine for elevation and contour maps. The point cloud has a color associated with every point. But there is no texture between them. So it doesn’t look like a normal picture when you zoom in. It is not as visually pleasing or realistic. For many applications you’re better off with the OBJ and no textures. Unless you need the colors of each point.

Is that a good summary?

I would say that’s a good summary! It depends on your use case - point clouds are useful for design process while OBJ files tend to be more visually aesthetic.