EdgeWise Concept

EdgeWise™ tries to automate as much of the tedious extraction work as possible.  For an outdoors scene, it starts by automatically extracting all of the points that fall on the ground surface.  It uses a “smart” ground-growing algorithm that climbs up and down hills and valleys, but will not climb up steep vertical surfaces (it assumes these are walls, vegetation, or other above-ground features).  The result is a classified set of ground points, as well as a TIN model that represents the ground surface.

Ground surface points automatically classified

The next step is to classify the above-ground points according to individual surfaces. The current version of EdgeWise only classifies planar surfaces, but future versions will find more complex geometry.

Coplanar clusters of points automatically classified

Next, EdgeWise builds CAD-style polygons around each cluster of coplanar points.  These polygons are highly accurate, since they are fit using least-squares regression.  Therefore you know they are a best-fit to the original point cloud data.  Additionally, these polygons are constructed with the original design intent in mind.  Therefore, the faces and edges that should be parallel are indeed exactly parallel; perpendicular features are exactly 90-degrees off from each other, etc.

Automatically created CAD polygons

These polygons can then be exported in dxf format and used in any CAD application to form the 3D template against which to build a final model.  The best part about the exported EdgeWise polygons is that they are already in CAD’s primary representation – edges and polygons, rather than lots and lots of points.  This makes the final reconstruction a breeze, whether you’re using traditional CAD applications like AutoCAD, Intergraph, or Microstation; intuitive mass-market applications like Google SketchUp; or even highly specialized applications such as Revit.  The final model can be quickly and very precisely snapped together using the EdgeWise polygons as a template.

Final model created by extruding and snapping original EdgeWise polygons within CAD application