When working with point cloud files and tracing BIM elements within Revit, I would seldom find myself wanting to turn the point cloud on/off to better visualize what is drawn versus what is the point cloud. This is especially useful when using Revit’s wireframe mode. To hide a point cloud, selecting the actual point cloud file is really clunky and slow. If you wrap the point cloud in a linked Revit file, you don’t even have access to hide the point cloud in the VG, as the point cloud tab is hidden.
This mini plugin turns the visibility of point cloud files on and off from a Revit ribbon button. The button can be added to a keyboard shortcut for quick access. Hopefully, this free plugin helps with your scan to BIM workflows.
Just downloaded this tool. This will be a great addition to our team’s workflow.
Currently, though, it doesn’t seem to be working - running the tool does nothing to the Point Cloud visible in the view.
Is there an FAQ or resource for troubleshooting issues?
That’s odd. The app toggles the “Show point clouds in this view” checkbox in the VG menu. Is the point cloud in a Revit link, linked to the main project (this should still work, btw)?
When a View Template is applied, the tool doesn’t work. Setting the View Template to None allows the Tool to run as intended.
Specifically, the two Parameter Categories Import & Point Clouds are causing the issue - when they are not included, the Tool runs as intended with a View Template applied (I’ve pasted in an image for reference)
Perhaps we could add a little warning and detect if the view template overrides that setting, so that the user knows to disable the override from the view template.
I think the warning would work well, suggesting to either disable those two Overrides or use the Temporary View Properties Tool (which works with this Add-in)
I know for our workflow, modeling from Point Clouds is primarily at the beginning of the project. So adjusting view templates while modeling and re-adjusting after the modeling is done isn’t a big ask.
Thanks for the feedback - I really like the idea of turning on the ‘temporary view properties’ purple box in the case that the point cloud visibility is controlled by the current view template (or perhaps all the time?). Maybe we have a warning too with a ‘Do not show again’ checkbox, so it doesn’t get annoying. I was working on another small tool for Bento to quickly toggle rooms and areas (including room and area reference lines, room and area boundary lines, and some other elements) on/off too, and I might use a similar approach there!
We’ll post a forum update with one of the next Bento releases that covers this issue (and some other cool updates!) soon!
I had some time to tackle this issue this morning. Our current solution is to enable the ‘temporary view properties’ if the view has a view template. Unfortunately, in some versions of Revit even if a view has a template that does not include the “V/G Override Point Clouds” property, Revit still won’t let us set that property without removing the view template - so instead we use the '‘temporary view properties’ for now.
See the attached gif for point cloud toggling with and without a view template!
Also, here’s a link to the Revit API issue I mentioned above, in case you’re curious:
Thanks for the suggestions duynguyen.mel! Can you elaborate a bit on your ideas for these features? I’d love to add them to your feature roadmap for Bento, but I’d like to make sure I understand what functionality your thinking of first. Here’s what I thought of when I read your suggestions:
Point Cloud Layer Visibility: I believe you can already control layers within a point cloud using the Revit Visibility Graphics dialog. Were you thinking of something beyond the capabilities already provided by Revit? Perhaps making something like AutoCAD layer groups, and adding a UI shortcut, so you can toggle the visibility between preset groups of layers for a specific point cloud file?
Extracting Objects from Point Clouds: If you’re talking about generating geometry from a point cloud, this is quite a large tasks. There are some large apps out there that do attempt to translate point clouds into geometry, but that’s probably more than we’d be able to accomplish inside Bento. Are there are specific objects you were looking to extract? We did once create a tool that detects and generates levels from a point cloud based on some tolerances. That one is actually already on our feature roadmap to add to Bento! Do you think that level tool in particular might be useful to you?
When you use Recap pro you can separate point cloud to more layout, this makes display better .
You can check this video: Autodesk Recap Pro | Full Overview - YouTube
starting at the 9th minute. Normal need go to VG, tab pointcloud and turn off layout you want, I think it’s possible to create a shortcut faster.
About extraction objects. I know many plugins faroasbuilt, cloudowx,scan2model, pointcab… but price very hight. Maybe we have a cheap price with same features
Yes, I remember seems like another plugin can do that.
Sometimes when modeling piping from point cloud, i need to hide the floor, ceiling or roof ( i separated in Recap)
Btw, I hope will have more features works with point cloud data. If you need to support let me know
We actually have another idea that could help with this. We were planning to add an editable section box (or multiple ones) that only work with point clouds. These section boxes could be edited in Revit , named, and enabled / disabled. Would this feature be useful or replace the layer visibility for your workflows?
