.PCD

Introduction

PCD is the native file format of the Point Cloud Library (PCL), an open source C++ library for processing point clouds that is widely used in robotics and computer vision. Depth cameras and lidar sensors on robots are often recorded to PCD files for later processing.

A PCD file can store any set of fields per point, such as position, colour, normal or intensity, and can keep the grid layout of an organised cloud from a depth camera, where points are arranged in rows and columns like the pixels of an image.

Structure

Every PCD file starts with a text header. FIELDS names each value of a point, SIZE gives its size in bytes, TYPE whether it is a signed integer (I), unsigned integer (U) or float (F), and COUNT how many elements it has. WIDTH and HEIGHT give the layout, with a height of 1 for an unorganised cloud, VIEWPOINT the sensor’s position and orientation, and POINTS the total. The last header line, DATA, says how the points follow: ascii, binary or binary_compressed.

# .PCD v0.7 - Point Cloud Data file format
VERSION 0.7
FIELDS x y z intensity
SIZE 4 4 4 4
TYPE F F F F
COUNT 1 1 1 1
WIDTH 3
HEIGHT 1
VIEWPOINT 0 0 0 1 0 0 0
POINTS 3
DATA ascii
0.0 0.0 0.0 12
1.0 0.0 0.0 40
0.0 1.0 0.0 33

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