MANAGER module provides the user with a set of functions for the complete management of points clouds in AutoCAD®. In CloudCUBE 2009 version such management is improved by allowing to associate more than 500 million points with a single dwg. The main functions are:

• Import from ASC, TXT, XYZ, PTS, RVE, STL, PLY, OBJ, 3DD, PTX formats;
• Export to RVE, ASC, STL, VRML, PLY, OBJ formats;
• Clouds organization with hierarchical tree structure;
• Points filters: noise, redundancy, number reduction, smooth;
• UCS creation and saving;
• Visualization: true/false colour, normals, slice visualization;
• Points and triangles selection: rectangular, circular, polygonal.

Once the scanning is loaded in AutoCAD®, appropriate filters tools can be applied on the imported points to reduce noise, remove redundancy, smooth or simply decrease the number of points.

MANAGER module provides several commands to intuitively organize the surveyed data before proceeding with the representation phase. CloudCUBE 2009 can keep entire (and with the desired structure) the geometrical database of the points acquired by laser scanner and extract the points of interest and displace them to other clouds where it is possible to work (by modifying, removing, filtering, etc.). Such organization process can be performed simply by selecting the desired points with proper selection tools and copying them in a new node of the hierarchical tree structure, which can be customized by the user.

In such way, the modelling process becomes substantially easier by quickly activating or hiding the created sub-parts and working only on a specific area of the clouds.

Moreover, it is possible to create and use in an aided modality the UCS planes, i.e. “electronic blackboards” where the user can work to obtain the desired bi-dimensional representations or the three-dimensional models by AutoCAD® commands or by the commands of the other CloudCUBE modules.

Clouds are visualized in AutoCAD® with a detail level which can be customized by the user and their points can be selected with the CAD Osnap. Moreover, there are several colouring modes for the points of clouds (true colour, false colour, single colour, partition colour) and a display mode by slices (i.e. visualizing a “slice”, with the desired width, of the points clouds according to a plane selected by the user).