CloudCompare is open-source point cloud processing software. It contains a variety of useful features, including many visualization options, mesh creation, simple manual manipulation of the cloud, ground filtering and many more. While we often use LAStools or PDAL for algorithmic processing, CC is useful for particular tasks in this pipeline and is helpful for manual and visual analysis.

Installation

• Download the installer from danielgm.net/cc/release. I recommend the latest stable unified version.
• Installation is straightforward, but one setting to adjust is to turn OFF the decimation of clouds and meshes in Display -> Display Options.

Training

• Setting the elevation as a scalar field (i.e., colormapping based on elevation / z-value)
• Applying a shader to a model
• Manually cleaning a point cloud using the Segment tool
• Outlier removal with the Statistical Outlier Removal (SOR) filter
• Creating a raster / DSM
• Creating an animation
• Ground filtering
• Creating a 2.5D mesh
• Classification correction - [Old Version]
• Clipping to a shapefile polygon
• Box extraction and Point Measurement Tool

What else can I do?

• Visualizing a raster DEM in CloudCompare
• Loading a GeoTiff / Raster as a Point Cloud
• Adding Images as Meshes
• Aligning a non-georeferenced point cloud to a georeferenced one
• Interpolating a scalar field from one cloud to another
• Clipping to multiple buildings
• Leveling a point cloud by fitting a plane
• Filtering out sky values using the Filter by Value option

Advanced features to read about

• Alignment via Iterative Closest Point algorithm
• Animation generation
• Command line mode

Other tutorials to try

• Change detection with M2C2 tools