CloudCompare forum

Hi,
I think CC lacks some bulk selection / filtering tools.
My case is that I imported E57 structured point cloud, acquired with a Matterport scanner, containing over a 100 separate scans, each shipped with multiple images, making up a skybox. AFAIK, merging the scans into one cloud requires deleting the images first (unless there's another way - in that case, please teach me :P)
Though it's a little daunting - deleting hundreds of images manually for each job. They are nested under each cloud entity, not listed separately in the DB Tree, so it's not so quick to dig and erase them.

Adding s screenshot of how they look in the DB Tree.

My idea is to introduce a tool to select all entities by type, or sort / filter the DB Tree by entity type. That would make selection and further bulk actions (e.g. deletion) much easier.
We have multiple types of entities in CC: cloud, mesh, image (and probably more, that I'm not aware of), so I believe this would make sense.

Maybe this could be achieved with the Python addon? I can't code though, so if someone could come up with a selection script for me, I would be grateful. Seems like something extremely helpful that should be easily (hopefully) implemented, even as a GUI feature. Such features are the backbone of managing large datasets.

If you right click on any DB tree entry, you just need to select 'Select children by type/and or name' and then choose 'Image' as the type to select.

Oh, I haven't noticed that option, thank you for the tip!

I just now figured another way of handling this specific issue (though selection pane is better):
During E57 import, when importing clouds is done, CC proceeds to import images and then I can instantly hit Cancel, so only a few images get imported and I can quickly delete them one by one in the DB Tree.
That brings me to another feature idea, but maybe I should add a separate thread for it:
E57 import settings, where we could specify upfront what kind of entities will be imported. If I could skip Images, that would speed up the import.
Again, maybe it's something doable with a little code.

The issue is not much the code, more the annoyance for the vast majority of users who don't need to see another 'option' popup that they have to click before the entities are loaded. It would be good if Windows had an 'option' button in the default file loading interface... but sadly we don't have this.