Meshing The Whole Point Cloud Using Hacksaw

  • Instead of loading all points at once and attempting to produce a single mesh from them, Hacksaw subdivides the point cloud into multiple smaller sub-regions (“Cells”) and meshes them one by one.

  • The resulting mesh segments (called “Partitions”) can be loaded with a single Mesh Loader object.

  • The individual Hacksaw Cells can be processed in multiple parallel tasks if the hardware allows, or can be distributed to multiple network machines running DEADLINE.

[G] Expand the “Hacksaw Settings” rollout of the Mesher.

[G] Set the “X Cells” value to 2.

[G] Set the “Y Cells” value to 10 - note that the length of the ship is aligned to the Y axis, so we want the most segments along it.

[G] Set the “Z Cells” value to 4 - the ship is quite tall, so it is a good idea to split it more often vertically.

  • These settings will produce 2*10*4 = 80 Cells.

  • Since we disabled the Point ROI object, the whole cloud’s bounding box will be considered - this is the default Hacksaw setting anyway: “Use Input Bounding Box”.

[G] Click the [Export World Space…]* button.

  • A Save File dialog will pop up, asking for the destination folder to save the Mesh Partitions into.

  • The default name proposed for saving will be the name of the Mesher.

[G] Enter the name of the output, for example “USSKidd”.

  • 80 Tasks will be added to the Task Manager, and the processing will start.

Loading The Mesh Partitions

  • Thanks to the asynchronous nature of SEQUOIA, you can start loading the first Mesh Partitions processed in the background as soon as they appear on disk.

  • This could be done in the same Document where we set up our Loading and Meshing, or in a completely separate Document.

  • Let’s say we want to create a new empty Document with just a Mesh Loader and no Points.

[G] Click on the File menu in the Main Menu bar and select New Document.

  • Alternatively, you can press CTRL+N.

  • A new Document called “Untitled2” with Orange color will be created, and a new Viewport tab will be docked next to the Green Document.

[G] Click on the New Mesh Loader icon: CreateMeshLoader

  • A file dialog will open.

[G] Navigate to the folder where the Hacksaw Meshing output is being written and select any of the Partitions.

[G] Check the option “Multiple Partitions” : “Load” in the Mesh Loader.

[G] Check the [Update Mesh Loader] button to reload.

[G] Press the Z key to Zoom Extents.