Reality Capture —You May Already Be a Winner By David Cohn Did you know that you probably have a copy of Autodesk ReCap already installed on your computer? create 3D models that can serve as the starting point for new designs. A photograph lets you capture the real world as a 2D representation. Reality capture enables you to capture the real world as a 3D representation. So, you can think of reality capture as a 3D photograph. The most common form of a 3D photograph is a point cloud. A point cloud is a large collection of points located precisely within a 3D coordinate system. Millions of points create a 3D representation of objects or geometric features. Autodesk ReCap processes these massive data sets and provides the ability to aggregate, enhance, clean, and organize the data to prepare it for use in other Autodesk products. For the past several years, Autodesk has been including a free copy of ReCap along with many That helps explain why ReCap is included with so of its products. The basic version of ReCap is many other Autodesk products. included by default when you install AutoCAD, Civil 3D, Inventor, and Revit. It is also included in all editions of the AutoCAD Design Suite, Building Design Suite, Infrastructure Design Suite, and Product Design Suite. ReCap is automatically installed, unless you specifically opt out by doing a custom install. So, what is Autodesk ReCap? Autodesk ReCap is a relatively new collection of software and services that enable you to digitally capture existing three-dimensional geometry and physical environments, and then use that data to 4 www.cadlearning.com