What is a point cloud, and what can you do with one?

24 JUN 2026 · 5 MIN READ · PRECISE LAND SURVEYS

Every conversation about laser scanning arrives at the same question. Here’s the plain-English answer, and why point clouds are quietly changing how building projects are designed.

The plain-English answer

A point cloud is millions of individual measurements, called points, each with a precise 3D position, captured by a laser scanner sweeping across everything it can see. Put enough of them together and you get something remarkable: a photorealistic, measurable, millimetre-accurate digital copy of a building or site that you can move through on a screen.

How it’s captured

The scanner is set up at a series of positions through the building or across the site, capturing a full dome of measurements at each one. The individual scans are then registered together in the office into a single, seamless cloud, checked against survey control so the whole dataset is accurate, not just each scan in isolation.

What you can actually do with one

• Measure anything, any time. Wall thicknesses, headroom, ridge heights, distances between any two points, without revisiting site.
• Produce drawings on demand. Plans, elevations and sections are drawn from the cloud; if the project changes and needs a section that wasn’t ordered, it’s cut from the existing data.
• Build 3D and BIM models. The cloud is the reference the model is built against, keeping the model honest to the real building.
• Share it with the team. Hosted in a browser-based viewer, the whole design team can explore and measure the building from anywhere, with no specialist software.
• Keep a permanent record. For historic buildings especially, the cloud is an archival record of the fabric at a moment in time.

Formats, sizes and the practicalities

Point clouds are delivered in standard formats: E57 is the common exchange format, with RCP/RCS for Autodesk workflows and LAS common for landscape data. Files are large (often tens of gigabytes for a whole building), which is exactly why we offer hosted viewer access: you get the full value of the data through a private link, and only download the heavy files if your own software needs them.

Do you need one?

If all you’ll ever need is a floor plan of a simple modern space, probably not. But if the building is complex, historic, or the project is likely to evolve (most are), the point cloud is the cheapest insurance a project can buy: capture everything once, and never be short of an answer.