CloudCompare forum

Hello Daniel

My name is Sean who is working on a research project at University of Qld for my final year of dental school.
I've just found out about this wonderful software and have been exploring its capabilities for the past few days.

In short, my research project involves aligning and comparing two 3D STL files of teeth - one of them having the perfect, ideal drilling shape, whereas the other one would be compared for feedbacks (2mm too deep, 1mm too wide, etc).

However there are a few modifications that I'd like to make in order to make it more user-friendly for the purposes of my project and was wondering if they would be practical and/or possible.

1. CloudCompare offers tons of exciting capabilities - however, for the purposes of my project, I would only require the clouds registration capability & distance computation capability. Would it be possible to isolate these two capabilities and make a simpler UI so that it's more efficient for my project's purpose? For ex. my ideal user interface would be, the user would simply drag and drop the two STL files, then the software would take those two files then automatically align them & show the distance computation (with preset parameters, etc.). I am not too experienced in coding so I was wondering how feasible that would be.

I would appreciate any feedbacks and/or advice regarding this project. Thank you for making this software open-source and for taking the time to reply; it is truly making an impact in the world.

If you are not a developer, then it might be a little bit hard. But removing stuff is always easier that adding stuff... You would have mostly to tinker with the main UI (mainwindow.ui) with Qt Designer. And then remove/comment a lot of code in mainwindow.cpp.

Normally, people who wants to do this kind of things should develop a plugin (where they can relatively simply re-use the existing code and interfaces in the way they want).

But if you want to try to 'remove things', then keep in mind that:
- most of this code is GPL, so you'll have to keep your modifications accessible to the public
- you probably won't be able to keep your project in sync with the official one very long
- also, even if it's only a part of CloudCompare, it's still "CloudCompare" (we won't be super happy if you change its name to something that loses the connection with CloudCompare ;).

Dear Daniel

Thank you for your prompt reply and for pointing me to the right direction.

I am more than happy to make all my modifications accessible to the public & give all credits to CloudCompare! Maybe we will name our project "TeethCompare" ;) and become a subsidiary branch of CloudCompare.

Again thank you for all of the hard work & accomplishments your team has made so we can make a true impact in the healthcare field.
As I am not very experienced with coding, I will try removing/modifying with Qt Designer as you suggested.

I will keep you updated!
Thank you Daniel

Sean

Hi Sean,

I need to use CloudCompare in the exact way that you were using it. Can you please give me some tutorial on how to do your method using the stl file? Thank you!

Mia