Patent ID: 8456471

Claim:
In a system that includes a first viewer and a second viewer configured to render point cloud data collected from a laser scan as a viewable image, a method for defining a clip region of the image of the second viewer using the image of the first viewer, the method comprising: rendering at a first viewer a first image of point cloud data of a scanned scene accessed from a data store, the first image representing one or more scans from a single scan position, wherein the first image, when rendered, is viewed from the point of view of a laser scanner performing the scan at the single scan position such that occluded from the laser scanner point of view at the single scan position is not included in the first image; specifying a clip volume to be applied to the first image of the first viewer; selecting a specific point of the first image to define a region of interest, wherein the region of interest includes the specific point and also includes all data points within the region of the specified clip volume; providing the region of interest to a second viewer; and rendering at the second viewer a second image from the point cloud data of the scanned scene accessed from the data store, the second image representing one or more scans from two or more scan positions, the second image comprising the selected specific point and those data points that are included within the region of interest as well as the occluded data from the laser scanner point of view at the single scan position not included in the first image that is included within the region of interest.