The PCD (Point Cloud Data) file format

This document describes the PCD (Point Cloud Data) file format, and the way it is used inside Point Cloud Library (PCL).

Why a new file format?

The PCD file format is not meant to reinvent the wheel, but rather to complement existing file formats that for one reason or another did not/do not support some of the extensions that PCL brings to n-D point cloud processing.
PCD is not the first file type to support 3D point cloud data. The computer graphics and computational geometry communities in particular, have created numerous formats to describe arbitrary polygons and point clouds acquired using laser scanners. Some of these formats include:

• PLY - a polygon file format, developed at Stanford University by Turk et al
• STL - a file format native to the stereolithography CAD software created by 3D Systems
• OBJ - a geometry definition file format first developed by Wavefront Technologies
• X3D - the ISO standard XML-based file format for representing 3D computer graphics data
• and many others

All the above file formats suffer from several shortcomings, as explained in the next sections – which is natural, as they were created for a different purpose and at different times, before today’s sensing technologies and algorithms have been invented.

PCD versions

PCD file formats might have different revision numbers, prior to the release of Point Cloud Library (PCL) version 1.0. These are numbered with PCD_Vx (e.g., PCD_V5, PCD_V6, PCD_V7, etc) and represent version numbers 0.x for the PCD file.
The official entry point for the PCD file format in PCL however should be version 0.7 (PCD_V7).

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