Data Editing

After you've acquired some information from the scanner you may need to clean the data from unwanted parts or from noise. Or you may want to remove some unwanted part of a mesh.

Selecting Data

If you need to remove something you first need to select what you want to remove. You can use the Selection Tools that works on both acquisition and meshes or use one of the Select Outliers function that works only on acquisitions.

Selection Tools

The selection tools are interactive tools that can be used dragging the mouse on the 3D View with the left click pressed down. A shape will appear following the mouse and all the information inside will be selected. The tools are:

• Rectangular: Draw a rectangle that start from the click point and grows following the mouse and stop when you stop pressing the left mouse button
• Elliptical : Draw an ellipses centered in the click point that grows following the mouse and stop when you stop pressing the left mouse button
• Polygonal : When you first click one time the software create a point, then it create another point every time you click. From the third point it create a polygon. When you double click the polygon is closed and all the data inside is selected
• Free Closed Line : When you click the software start to draw a line that follow the mouse. When you stop pressing the left mouse button the line is closed with the first point and all the data insisde the closed line is selected
• Free Open Line : When you click the software start to draw a line that follow the mouse. When yuou stop pressing the left mouse button all the data exatcly below the line is selected.
• Segment : When you click the software start to draw a straight line between the click point and the current position of the mouse. When yuou stop pressing the left mouse button all the data exatcly below the line is selected.

Unselect Data

If you keep the CTRL key down instead to select data you'll unselect data.

Pass-Through Selection

The Pass through (CTRL+ALT+V) that you can find in the 3D View Context Menu change how the selection works only on meshes.

If this option is disabled only the part of the mesh that you can see will be selected bye the selection tools. All that is hidden, or on the other side of the object will not be selected.

If the option is enabled all the data inside the selection tool shape will be selected, even if you can not see it or is hidden behind other mesh surfaces.

Outlier Cleaning

With the name Outlier are identified all the points of an acquisition that are not part of the object surface. They can be noise, reflections on the object surfaces or acquisition artifacts.

The acquisition strategy used for every object already apply a specific outlier cleaning. In this way most of the time the data will be already good to be aligned, converted in mesh directly after the acquisition.

If you want to further remove other outliers you can use one of the three Select Outliers tools

Select Outlier

This is the most simple tool, it try to identify all the points that are alone, far from all the other points. When you click on this tool button a windows will apper with two parameters

• Selectivity : How many points need to be close to tell if a point is alone or not. High value means more points selected
• Strength : How close two points need to be to be considered not alone. High value means more points selected

As you change the parameters the software will show the selection in real time. Then you can click ok to confirm the selection.

Select Outlier by Angle

This tool works in a similar way to the Select Outlier tool there is only one parameter, an angle. A point is considered an outlier only if there are no point near him that create an angle smaller than the parameters. This mean that a smaller angle in the parameter will mean more points selected.

As you change the parameters the software will show the selection in real time. Then you can click ok to confirm the selection.

Select Outlier Segmentation

This tool works in the same way as the Select Outlier tool but analyze blocks of points and not single points.

Base Selection

If you need to remove the Base of the acquisition, the part of the acquisition near the model holder, you can use the Cut Height Acquisition Tool.

A slider will appear that change a height value. All the points below that height will be selected.

As you move the slider the software will show the selection in real time. Then you can click ok to confirm the selection.

Editing Functions

When you have a selection ready you can use one of the following editing functions from the 3D View Context Menù, from the Edit Menù or with the appropriate keyboard shortcut:

• Delete Selection (DEL) : Remove the currently selected data
• Crop Selection (CTRL+K) : Keep only the selected data and remove all the rest
• Invert Selection (CTRL + I) : Select all the data that is not selected and deselect the selected data
• Clear Selection (CTRL + C) : Unselect all the data
• Select All (CTRL + SHIFT + C) : Select all the data
• Select Connected (ALT + SHIFT + D) : Only for meshes, extend the selection to get all the connected parts to the curretion selection area
• Dilate Selection (CTRL + D) : Extend the selection a little bit to the data close to the actual selection
• Erode Selection (CTRL + SHIFT + D) : Reduce the selection a little bit from the margin of the actual selection

Now that you know how to select and clean Acquisitions and Meshes you can return to the Main Page or read about Data Alignment