Enhance functionality of LGS with REGISTER 360

Preview:

  • Clean point clouds

  • Limit Boxes

  • Blur plates and faces

  • Edit HDR Images

  • Attach Geotags

  • Orthoimages

  • Virtual Waypoints

  • Coordinate Systems

  • Create Master Plan

  • Add 3D models

LGS files are Leica Geosystems’ Universal Digital Reality project files and are an extremely flexible format. These LGS files are powered by JetStream technology allowing users to access all of their project data including points, imagery, and supplemental information (GeoTags, metadata etc.) instantly, without import and load times, across the full reality capture toolchain including Cyclone 3DR, CloudWorx, and TruView Viewer. So by default, the LGS is the best format by itself, but it could be even better if you make a few enhancements and add interaction objects that will expand the useability of the file.

First of all, try to clean your cloud as much as it is possible. Cleaned point cloud looks better, weight lighter and all automatic extraction tools gave you more accurate results. As you could know in REGISTER 360 there is a manual cleaning tool and automatic filters, don't forget to use them both in your projects, the combination of them will give you the best result.


The Detect Moving Objects filter in Cyclone REGISTER 360 works on a bundle to detect objects that have moved between setups. Moved points are marked in red after the filter has been run on registration. To run the filter:

  • Right-click on the bundle and execute the Detect Moving Objects command. The filter automatically detects and marked the points that are associated with the objects that are moved between setups.

  • After the processing has finished, the points associated with moved objects are classified and highlighted. To show the moved points click Show Moved Points.

  • Use the fence tool in the upper toolbar to draw a fence around an area of interest. Then use the Delete Inside or Outside of the drawn fence. Also, you could just click Delete all marked points to delete all of them. To finish the process and combine the greyscale points with the desired red marked points, click the Show Moved Points icon again.

REGISTER 360 - Detect Moving Objects

If you need to delete some static objects that were located above the floor then you could use Smooth Surface Filter. After running it, the user will be presented with “good” and “bad” points which they can then keep or discard either by fencing off certain areas for removal or removing all “bad” points, the same way as the Detect Moving Objects filter.

  • Click on the Smooth surface icon, and the color mapping will turn to Greyscale. Double-click on a central location on a representative surface to begin the detection process. The detection process will run and expose the initial result in greyscale while the non-surface data or “bad points” are shown in red.

  • Next, click on the areas that have overlapping red and grey points to refine the results in those areas. Continue this process until the desired smooth surface is fully detected.

  • Next, using the standard fencing tools, fence desired area and then use Delete Inside or Delete outside of the fence to remove only the red marked points. To finish the process and combine the greyscale smooth surface with the desired red marked points, click the smooth surface icon again.

REGISTER 360 - Smooth Surface

One more useful tool for cleaning point cloud and not only is Limit Boxes. Also, limit boxes could be stored in an LGS file, so you could use them in additional scenarios for analyzing your data. By clicking Create Limit Box a temporary clipping box is placed and shown that is vertically aligned to the z-axis and fits the setup/bundle extents.

  • To resize a limit box, hover over the box faces to highlight. The highlighted face can be moved using the mouse in two directions. Hold the SHIFT key for selecting the opposing faces.

  • To rotate a limit box, hover over an edge line while holding the ALT key to highlight the line. The highlighted edge will become a handle for rotation. Hold ALT + SHIFT keys to select the opposing edges.

The created Limit Boxes are temporary and discarded when the user switches to a different view mode, unless stored. Using the Limit Box Manager, users can save newly created boxes, delete existing boxes, activate clipping functionality, set the visibility, and export to options. Check the Export option to add a clip to supported export formats of Cyclone Enterprise and LGS.

REGISTER 360 - Limit Box Manager

Next, work with images before exporting them to the LGS file. I showed in one of my previous tutorials how to edit colors there, here is the link - Adjust the color of panoramic images in REGISTER 360

But sometimes you should also blur faces and car plates on it, for that purpose you could use the Edit Image Blur tool. Select setup and click on it with the right mouse button, in the popup window select edit image blur. In the appeared window you'll see the panoramic image where you could click Auto Blur and the software with AI will detect all people and car plates on the image and will add blur on them. If you'll select the view button you could add blur at any place you want by holding the left and right mouse buttons.

REGISTER 360 - Edit Image Blur

Add additional files and links as GeoTags to your project. GeoTags can be created and edited in the Setup Cloud view. Simply enter the Setup Cloud view and click on the Edit GeoTags button on the top toolbar. On the right setting window, you could select a file from imported assets or from your computer for assigning it to a new GeoTag, and specify the category and name for it. Additional materials like sound, images videos, will improve the immersive effect and rise the information of the file.

REGISTER 360 - GeoTags

As additional materials, you could add Orthoimages to your scene as GeoTag. For getting a nice result you should do the below steps:

  • In SiteMap, view use the UCS tool to square the bundle to the XYZ axis for proper orthographic orientation

  • Create a limit box and set the size around the area of interest

Note: The limit box must be saved in the manager for it to be used with the Ortho-Image section.

  • From the upper toolbar, select Create Ortho Image. Click Draw Ref Line using left click and drag, draw a line with the direction arrow facing the front of the area of interest

  • Set the slice thickness. This set how deep the image capture will look when rendering the image. Set the file location to the desired folder on the disk. Set image scale and image smoothing. Check Suppress Tiling to get one single high-resolution Image.

  • Add this orthoimage as basic GeoTag to your scene

REGISTER 360 - Ortho-Omage Sections

Add additional waypoints from the Setup View. It could be a helpful additional point of view, for example from a bird view above all site, from a potential person or camera location, etc.

Select points with the Pick Points tool and click Create WayPoints button at the bottom toolbar. In the popup window input height from the selected point and click the Ok button. When creation will be done, you'll see the new Waypoint, double-click on it, and the camera location will be transferred to that place.

REGISTER 360 - Create WayPoints

Create advanced user coordinate systems. These tools allow greater flexibility in creating coordinate systems in the point cloud which can be used later Revit for example or other CAD software that requires to have separate coordinate systems for different buildings or other objects. You could create the USC by different methods:

By Pick, the method will allow the location of a pick point on the point cloud to adopt the coordinate set by the user, then optionally, the user can create a plane to set the X or Y-axis.

By Plane allows the creation of a UCS by assigning a plane either X or Y axis, without the assigning of a coordinate like By Pick in the workflow above.

By Corner - The method uses the planes created by the corner grow to set X or Y and the corner Vertex to set the UCS.

REGISTER 360 - Create Advanced UCS

If you have a complex scene with different zones, areas, or floors add the master SiteMap. It is a SiteMap that contains an image that can be used to link to other SiteMaps within a scene in TruView. A Master SiteMap can be used to help navigate complex scenes with multiple SiteMaps. The master SiteMap only contains an image with hyperlinks, no setups or links. The Master SiteMap can only be created and configured in the finalize section of Cyclone REGISTER 360 and requires two or more SiteMaps to be used.

  • In the Review and Optimize Section, click Add SiteMap then drag and drop setups into a new SiteMap or multiple new SiteMaps. Don't forget that you could add any image as a background for your SiteMaps and place setups over it.

  • In the finalize section, click Add Master SiteMap and select an image

  • Select SiteMap Hyperlinks then Create Hyperlink, and define the clickable hotspot of a SiteMap using the mouse to draw a closed polygon. Then, select the SiteMap (that the hotspot links to) from the drop down list. Optionally, click Alternate Colors to alternate colors between different hyperlinks for increased clarity

  • Repeat Step 3 for all SiteMaps to create one Master SiteMap with hyperlinks to all sub-SiteMaps

REGISTER 360 - Split scans to different SiteMaps

After all corrections will be done, go to the report step and Publish LGS file. Open it in the TruView Viewer and you'll see your Master Plan, click on the required area and the viewer will open for you additional plan with only relevant for that SiteMap setups.

Open any setup view and you'll see GeoTags, and additional WayPoints. On The Left tollbar you could select different LimitBoxes and switch between different coordinate systems. The point cloud will be cleaned, faces and car's plates on images will be blured and image colors looks much better than if you leave them by deffault.

Add to your scene 2D or 3D content, it could be IFC, OBJ or COE formats. That models will be visisble in panoramic and in 3D view. You could change their size, position and rotation. And you could do measurements between models and point clouds, so it will increase the benefits from the using of this file. Save the file before closing it to store these D models in your scene.

TruVIew - LGS loaded to the TruView Viewer

Note: LGS file should be exported with Cyclone PUBLISHER Pro license to be able for import 3D models.

If you still have a question or you want to repeat this tutorial by yourself, but don't have a valid license then you could reach me by clicking the below button.