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CloudCompare

CloudCompare is an open source tool for editing and processing dense 3D point clouds (such as those acquired with laser scanners).

The main purpose of CloudCompare on Puhti is to serve as a tool for visualizing point cloud data.

Availability

The following versions of CloudCompare are available in Puhti:

  • CloudCompare 2.12.4 for GPU partitions. Plugins: qEDL, qPDALIO, qAnimation and qPCV.
  • CloudCompare 2.10.3 for CPU partitions with more plugins than the GPU version.

GPU version is faster, but consumes also a lot more billing units. Also queues to GPU partitions may be longer.

Usage

Both versions of CloudCompare are available in Puhti web interface.

GPU-accelerated CloudCompare

GPU-accelerated CloudCompare is available with Accelerated visualization app

Basic CloudCompare

Basic CloudCompare is available via Desktop app. After launching the remote desktop, double-click CloudCompare icon OR open Terminal (Desktop icon) and start CloudCompare:

module load cloudcompare
CloudCompare

License

CloudCompare is published under the GNU General Public License.

You are free to use CloudCompare for any purpose, including commercially or for education.

Citation

CloudCompare (version 2.10.3) [GPL software]. (2021). Retrieved from http://www.cloudcompare.org.

If you used a CloudCompare plugin, also cite the plugin authors.

Acknowledgement

Please acknowledge CSC and Geoportti in your publications, it is important for project continuation and funding reports. As an example, you can write "The authors wish to thank CSC - IT Center for Science, Finland (urn:nbn:fi:research-infras-2016072531) and the Open Geospatial Information Infrastructure for Research (Geoportti, urn:nbn:fi:research-infras-2016072513) for computational resources and support".

Installation

CloudCompare was installed to Puhti with Apptainer. The basic version was installed using this CloudCompare Apptainer definition file.

References