How to Share an E57 File With a Client Who Has No Software

To share an E57 file with a client who has no software, upload it to a browser-based point cloud platform and send a link instead of the file. The client clicks it and the scan opens in Chrome, Edge, Safari or Firefox, with nothing to install. Export the E57 with its images turned on and the client also gets the 360° photos your scanner took at every setup, and on Swyvl they can open them beside the point cloud, measure from them and reply on your notes.

Disclosure: I am the founder of Swyvl, one of the options below. Details about other tools come from their own documentation, read in November 2026. Where their docs do not say something, I say that rather than guess.

Why you cannot just send the E57

E57 is the open, vendor-neutral file type for laser scans (ASTM E2807). Nearly every registration package exports it, which is why it is the default hand-over. It is the wrong thing to send someone without scanning software, for three reasons:

• Nothing on a normal computer opens it. The points sit in compressed binary sections described by an XML index. Windows, macOS and browsers have no idea what to do with that. The client needs Cyclone, SCENE, ReCap, CloudCompare or similar.
• It is big. A building survey is easily 10 to 100 GB, often more with panoramas. That is past every email limit and a long wait on a transfer service.
• Even when it opens, it is hard to read. A client who installs CloudCompare to open a 40 GB scan on an office laptop usually gives up.

A link fixes all three: the platform converts the scan once, on upload, into a version that streams, and the client only loads what is on screen.

Step 1: Export a structured E57 with images

Most terrestrial scanners take a set of photos at every setup. Whether those photos end up in the E57 depends on one export setting. Turn it on and the E57 carries a 360° photo per scan position, lined up with the scan. As of November 2026:

Two more settings worth getting right while you are there:

• Include color and intensity. A colored cloud is far easier for a client to read.
• Set the coordinate system if the scan is georeferenced, so it lands in the right place on a map and your notes carry over to the next scan of the site.

Step 2: Check what is inside before you send it

It is worth thirty seconds to confirm the photos made it in. Two free ways:

• Swyvl’s free point cloud tool. Drop the E57 on it and it reads the file’s index in your browser: scans, points, 360° photos and whether a coordinate system is set. It does not upload the file or load the points, so a 50 GB E57 answers in seconds.
• E57 Inspector (free, open source, desktop). Open the file; if an Images section appears, the photos are there.

If the count is zero and your scanner took photos, go back to the export settings in step 1.

Step 3: Upload the E57 as it is

Do not convert it to LAZ first. Converting keeps the points but drops the 360° photos and the scan positions, because LAS and LAZ store points only.

In Swyvl, drop the E57 on the client’s site. Files up to 100 GB upload straight from the browser in parallel chunks and resume if the connection drops. Swyvl has been tested with E57s of over 450 million points; for a larger scan, export it as several E57s. Then:

• The points are converted to COPC, a streaming version of LAZ, so the scan opens at full size in the browser.
• The 360° photos are pulled out: spherical photos, and Leica and Matterport photos stored as six cube faces, which are stitched into one 360° per setup. The E57 stays one file with a 360° × N badge, and only the E57 counts toward your storage.
• The original E57 is kept, so you can let the client download it if they need it in their own software.

Step 4: Pin notes where they need to look, then send one link

Before you send, put the client’s attention where it belongs:

• Pin a note on the spot. Click in the point cloud, or in a 360° photo where the detail is easier to see. A note made in a photo lands on the 3D point it shows, so it appears in the cloud and in the nearby 360s.
• Add a sketch. Sketch captures what is on screen (the cloud, the photo or both side by side) and lets you draw on it with a pen, arrows, shapes and text. It is the marked-up screenshot, kept on the note at the place it is about.
• Save a measurement as a note, so the number the client asked for is already there.

Notes belong to the place, not the file. If your scans are georeferenced, upload next year’s scan of the same site and this year’s notes show at the same spots on it in your workspace, labeled with the capture they were made on, so open items carry forward instead of getting lost in last year’s email. A scan in a local grid keeps its own notes.

Then create the share link. Send it to named people and they can reply on your notes in the browser, with text, photos or a sketch of their own, for free, with no account to set up: they confirm their email with a code. Public and password-protected links are view-only. You can see when the link was opened, and it does not expire unless you revoke it.

On the link the client gets the same view you do: scan positions as discs in the cloud, each 360° opening side by side with the point cloud, both turning together, and point, distance, area and height measurements, including from the photos.

How the options compare

To be fair to the others: ATIS.cloud handles bigger single uploads (up to 1 TB) and RCP/RCS files, Trimble Connect is the natural home if your client already works in Trimble’s ecosystem, and Potree costs nothing if you have someone to run it. Swyvl does not register, clean or process scans, and does not calculate volumes or cut cross-sections. Use your scanner software for that and Swyvl for the hand-over.

XGRIDS scanners

XGRIDS Lixel scanners (L2 Pro, K1) capture panoramas alongside the scan, and LixelStudio can write them into an E57. As of LixelStudio’s October 2026 manual:

1. When you process the project, turn on Output Panoramic Images (you can blur faces and plates here too), and set the coordinate system at this stage: it is chosen in processing, not at export.
2. For a points-only E57, use the regular export: select the point cloud and export it as unstructured e57.
3. For an E57 with the panoramas, open Tools, choose LAS to e57 under data conversion, select the colorized point cloud and its pose file (pose_no_offset.csv if the project has absolute coordinates), set the panorama output interval and click Confirm.

Export is available on LixelStudio’s free license, but the colorized cloud and panoramas it needs come from processing, which is not.

XGRIDS does not document which image type its E57 panoramas use, so run the result through the free E57 check before you send it: the 360° count it shows is the number Swyvl will open beside the cloud. A separate panoramic JPEG from an XGRIDS scanner also opens in Swyvl as a 360° photo on its own. If you want the Gaussian splat rather than the point cloud, see how to share an XGRIDS scan: Swyvl opens LCC and LCC2 too.

Related

• Why deliver an E57 with its 360° photos?
• What is an E57 file?
• Convert E57 to LAS, LAZ or COPC with PDAL
• How to share FARO and Leica scan data online
• Share a laser scan with a client who has no software
• Swyvl vs Cintoo

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