Stereoscopic CAD on LiDAR & oriented surfaces
StereoCloud3D streams massive LiDAR and photogrammetric point clouds in real time and lets you digitize precise CAD features in true stereoscopic 3D — from cartographic terrain to vertical facades, bridge faces, dam fronts and inclined roofs. Work with georeferenced imagery underlays, limit streaming with Cloud AOI, and place vertices on the cloud surface with AUTO-Z and Cloud Z snap.
What it does
From raw LAS/LAZ to a finished, accurate vector deliverable — without leaving the 3D model.
Tiled level-of-detail streaming keeps clouds of hundreds of millions to billions of points smooth on ordinary workstations.
Neutral hardware profiles route stereo to the right display: passive dual-pane (side-by-side on a secondary 3D panel) or active shutter when supported. The main window keeps menus and a mono reference view.
Lines, polylines, breaklines, contours, building outlines and more — with AUTO-Z and Cloud Z snap so elevation follows the live cloud surface.
Draw an XY area of interest to limit streaming to the zone you are working on. The AOI drapes on the cloud, follows pan, and is stored in the project.
Import georeferenced orthophotos with GDAL, stream them in the project, and toggle visibility and opacity from the Imagery toolbar.
Align the view to vertical walls, bridge faces, dam fronts or custom inclined planes — digitize in stereo directly on TLS and dense 3D clouds.
Automatically seed a grid of spot heights sampled from the cloud, with spike removal and stereo verification.
One control trades crispness for fluidity, so huge scenes stay responsive on any GPU — Fast, Balanced or Quality.
Compose a project from an existing project, cloud folder, imagery and CAD drawing. Queue LAS/LAZ to tile indexes in the Cloud Batch Converter without blocking CAD.
Pick any point on the cloud with G, then rotate with Shift+MMB or a trackball for yaw/pitch, and Ctrl+Shift+MMB for roll.
Versioned drawing backups on save, restore from backup, and input recovery tools so a stuck pan or orbit never blocks production.
Per-project reports: operator, time worked, points used, entities produced and dataset sizes.
Production UI
Floating CAD Draw / Modify toolbars, Layer Manager, Object Snap, Display toggles and a classic command line sit around a full-resolution viewport. Switch Cloud, CAD, Imagery and Stereo without leaving the scene.
Massive clouds, fluid navigation
A streaming tile engine loads only what is visible, at a resolution matched to your zoom. Pan and zoom stay smooth even on 1.5 billion-point scenes; a crisp full-resolution pass renders the instant you stop.
Context under the vectors
Import orthophotos and raster backgrounds with GDAL, stream them inside the project, and keep their visibility synchronized with the CAD layer stack. Toggle and fade opacity from the Imagery toolbar without interrupting digitizing.
Focus streaming where you work
Cloud → Cloud AOI… (Ctrl+Shift+A) lets you draw an XY rectangle that limits cloud streaming to the area of interest. Corners drape on the cloud surface, the overlay follows MainMono pan, and the AOI is saved in the project manifest.
From cloud to deliverable
Digitize themed features with one-key macros, snap elevation with AUTO-Z or Cloud Z, manage layers and groups, and export to DXF. Versioned CAD backups and restore keep long sessions safe.
True depth, real accuracy
Perceive genuine relief and place vertices on the correct surface — ground, roof ridge or structure face — instead of guessing from a flat view. Adjustable parallax and a dedicated stereo cursor keep fusion comfortable on dual-pane and shutter hardware.
Supported 3D display classes
StereoCloud3D maps your workstation to a neutral profile — no vendor-specific setup in the product UI. The main window always keeps menus and a mono reference view; the stereo pair goes to the correct output for your glasses or panel.
| Profile | Typical hardware | Routing |
|---|---|---|
| Passive dual-pane | Dual-LCD / polarized panels (VoxelSpace, PluraView class) | Side-by-side on secondary monitor |
| Active shutter | 120 Hz display + IR emitter + LC glasses | Quad-buffer when GL stereo is available; SBS fallback |
Configure in Stereo → Hardware profile or cycle with Ctrl+Shift+Alt+H. Display / stereo layout persistence restores your last setup on launch. See the User Guide for dual-monitor setup.
Beyond planimetry
Cartographic restitution from the air is only half the story. Terrestrial laser scanning and high-density aerial clouds now capture vertical and inclined geometry — building façades, bridge soffits, dam faces, embankments, pitched roofs — with millimetre-level detail. StereoCloud3D lets you select any work plane in space, view it in stereoscopic 3D, and digitize vector features directly on that surface.
Ideal for surveyors and engineers working with TLS as-built data, heritage documentation, bridge and dam inventories, and Scan-to-BIM workflows where manual modelling from oriented views is still the most reliable path on complex geometry.
Performance
StereoCloud3D is engineered around datasets that bring ordinary viewers to a halt.
During navigation the cloud is drawn at a coarser detail so panning and zooming stay fluid; a fraction of a second after you stop, one full-resolution frame is rendered. A single Cloud Performance control — Fast, Balanced or Quality — lets each operator match the trade-off to their GPU. Pair it with Cloud AOI when you only need a dense block of the survey.
Get in touch
Tell us about your project and we'll show you StereoCloud3D on your kind of data.
StereoCloud3D is designed and developed by dr. eng. Luca Menci.
This software is the result of more than two decades of expertise and know-how at Menci Software. It is an evolution of StereoCAD — the stereo drawing system on blocks of oriented images.
The product is currently distributed by Iter, Arezzo, Italy.
Internet connection required. StereoCloud3D uses online license verification: an active internet connection is mandatory for the entire time the software is in use, not only at activation.
STEREO