Scaling Issue When Importing Point Cloud to Recap/Navisworks

I am having some major issues when trying to import a point cloud file in to Autodesk Recap and Navisworks. The import works fine and it opens normally, but when I go to measure I notice my point cloud is approximately 30% larger than what my DroneDeploy map reads. The DroneDeploy map dimensions are correct, but for some reason the point clouds come in to these software at a larger scale. Even when I change the scale from meters to feet, it stays the same size.

Has anyone else had these issues?

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Are you using a coordinate system with GCP’s?

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This has been on ongoing issue with Recap as part of the workflow for almost 2 years now. Recap is a glorified viewer/converter with a couple of useful commands, but it is terrible at scales and measurements. I assume you have done all this, but make sure your units and scales are setup in the Recap and Navisworks projects before you import any data. They are both metric by default. Make sure you are in US (survey) feet and not international.

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That wouldn’t make a huge difference as the DroneDeploy map is only a couple inches off. It’s when I export as a point cloud, and change the units to feet. Then, for some reason, the drawing is 30% larger.

Have you tried setting everything up in USft and leaving the layer as meters in Navisworks? This is the problem people have been having. When you set it to feet in Navisworks the program is still reading what it thinks are meters and makes everything 3.28084 times larger which is the opposite of what it should do. What model and year of Navisworks are you using?

My team here at Barton Malow Builders and I have done extensive research on this issue. It is an X and Y axis scaling issue when you don’t use Ground Control Points (GCPs). This is a processing error out of DroneDeploy. Plain and simple. This is just like when we were getting yellow pointcloud exports. DD said it was Autodesk, Autodesk said it was DD. But when we opened the XYZ files and looked at the color values directly out of DroneDeploy, it was from them. As such I have limited faith in DroneDeploy’s internal diagnostics of related issues.

In this case the X and Y axes are scaled up ±1.299ish. I usually just round up to 1.3. One theory here is that this is a metric/imperial conversion, but I don’t think so as I couldn’t find a similar conversion multiplier for any imperial/metric or metric/imperial conversions. Weird thing is Z axis isn’t effected.

I was going to try and mody the XYZ file, however it is too long to import into Excel for an easy formula conversion. Other ideas? Thanks.

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My question above did not get answered so the resolution never arrived. The Recap/Navis works solution should be used for aesthetics only, not for accuracy. That said you could try the alignment tool in Navisworks once you have imported it. As I stated above this is a very common issue and if you Google it you won’t see much resolution beyond a silly workflow and band-aid. We said goodbye to it 2 years ago and haven’t looked back.

Thanks Michael. I agree that there are workarounds, but the fact remains this is an ongoing ERROR on DroneDeploy’s part and should be resolved. By the way XYZ files are still exporting as yellow.

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It’s not DroneDeploy. We have had this happen with point clouds from Pix4D, Metashape and Carlson PhotoCapture. The XYZ is most likely an incompatibility in formatting. DroneDeploy needs to look at it to make sure the data is formatted correctly.

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