What is a point cloud?

A point cloud, in plain terms

A point cloud is a set of measured points in 3D space. Each point has a position — an X, Y, and Z coordinate — and usually a colour value sampled from a camera. Put millions of them together and the surfaces of a room, a building, or a whole site emerge as a dense, measurable 3D record of how things actually are, not how a drawing says they should be.

Unlike a photo, a point cloud carries real dimensions. You can measure a doorway, check a floor-to-ceiling height, or compare as-built conditions against design intent — directly from the data.

How a point cloud is captured

There are three common ways to produce one, each with different trade-offs:

• Handheld SLAM LiDAR. You walk through the space and the scanner builds the cloud in real time using simultaneous localisation and mapping. Fast, flexible, and well suited to occupied or access-constrained sites — this is what the XGRIDS Lixel K2 does.
• Terrestrial laser scanning. A tripod scanner captures dense, survey-grade points from fixed stations. Slower to set up, but the accuracy benchmark for contained, stable spaces.
• Photogrammetry. Software reconstructs a cloud from many overlapping photos. No LiDAR required, but accuracy and scale depend heavily on capture discipline and lighting.

The file formats you will meet

Once captured and processed, a point cloud is exported to a working format the downstream software can read:

• .las / .laz. The standard LiDAR formats; LAZ is simply a compressed LAS.
• .e57. A vendor-neutral format for exchanging scans and imagery between tools.
• .rcp. Autodesk ReCap projects, used as reference inside Revit and AutoCAD.

What you can do with it

A point cloud is the foundation, not the finished product. From one capture, a team can produce as-built reference for Scan-to-BIM, a measurable backdrop for renovation planning, progress comparisons on a construction site, heritage documentation, or the geometry layer behind a digital twin. Volumet rents the scanner that captures the cloud — what you build from it is yours.