Deliver an E57 with its 360° photos because together they do what neither does alone. A 360° photo shows a site the way people remember it, sharp enough to read a label or see a crack, but it has no scale and no position: you cannot measure on it, and a note on it is only a direction. A point cloud has true geometry, but up close it breaks into dots and fine detail is hard to read. In an E57 the photos were taken from the scan positions themselves, so every pixel in a photo lines up with a 3D point in the scan. That lets you measure on what you can see, and pin a note on the thing itself rather than near it.
This is for surveyors and scanning teams deciding what to export from FARO SCENE, Leica Cyclone or similar software, and for anyone whose client keeps asking “what am I looking at?”.
What a 360° photo can and cannot tell you
A 360° photo is a picture of everything around one point. It is the easiest thing to read on a site: a client recognizes the room, the pipe rack, the stain on the ceiling.
What it cannot carry is distance. Each pixel records the direction from the camera to something, but not how far away that something is. So:
- No measurement. A doorway one meter away and a building fifty meters away can fill the same number of pixels. Without depth there is no scale. Tools that let you measure on 360s add depth from somewhere else: a point cloud, a second photo or a known reference.
- Notes are only a direction. Pin a note on a standalone 360 and what gets stored is a pan and tilt angle from the camera. The note has no position in the world, so no other photo, map or model can show it. Walk ten meters to the next photo and the note is gone.
Standalone 360s are still useful. They are cheap and fast, they work as a walkthrough and they place on a map by GPS. They just cannot answer “how big?” or “where exactly?”.
What a point cloud can and cannot tell you
A point cloud from a terrestrial scanner is millions of measured points. Every one has a position, so you can measure distances, areas and heights directly, and anything you pin on it has real coordinates.
The trade-off is readability. Zoom in on a valve tag, a crack or a gauge and the cloud breaks into dots. Even a colored scan is softer than a photo, and people who have never used a point cloud viewer find it hard to tell what they are looking at. That is why clients ask for screenshots, and why screenshots come back with red circles and “is this the one?”.
What you get when the E57 keeps its 360s
Most terrestrial scanners capture a photo set at every setup, from the same position as the scan, and the E57 standard can store those images in the file alongside the points, with each image’s position and orientation. Because the photo and the scan share a viewpoint, a direction in the photo can be traced into the cloud to a real 3D point.
In practice that means:
| 360° photo alone | Point cloud alone | E57 with 360s | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Read fine detail (labels, cracks, gauges) | Yes | Hard up close | Yes, in the photo |
| Measure distance, area, height | No, there is no scale | Yes | Yes, from the photo |
| A note has a 3D position | No, only a direction | Yes | Yes, placed from the photo |
| Note shows from other viewpoints | No | Yes | Yes, in the cloud and nearby photos |
| Easy for a client to understand | Yes | Takes practice | Yes |
| Note shows on the next scan of the site | No | Yes, if georeferenced | Yes, if georeferenced |
The photo becomes the way in and the scan becomes the ruler. You look where the detail is clear and the measurement comes from the geometry behind it.
How it works in Swyvl
Upload the E57 as it is. You do not need to convert it first. Swyvl converts the points to COPC so the cloud streams in the browser, and pulls out the 360° photos stored in the file: spherical images, and Leica and Matterport 360s stored as six cube faces, which are stitched into one photo per setup. The E57 stays one file in your list with a 360° × N badge, and only the E57 counts toward your storage.
Then:
- Scan positions show as discs in the point cloud. Click one and that 360° photo opens side by side with the cloud. Sync view turns both together, and in Walk mode you click the floor to move to the next setup.
- Measure in the photo. Point, distance, area and height work in the 360 view. Each click lands on the 3D point the photo shows, so the numbers come from the scan, and the measurement draws in the cloud too, lines and areas following the surface.
- Pin a note on what you can see. Click the cracked bracket in the photo and the note lands on the bracket in the scan. It shows in the cloud and in the other 360s nearby, so whoever opens the file next finds it from wherever they are standing. Notes belong to the place, not the file, so when the scan is georeferenced and you scan the site again, the note shows at the same spot on the new scan in your workspace, labeled with when it was made.
- Add a sketch. Sketch captures the view you are in (the photo, the cloud or both side by side) and lets you draw on it with a pen, arrows, shapes, text and stickers. The sketch is saved with the note, and opening the note puts the viewer back in that layout and photo. It is the marked-up screenshot your client was going to send anyway, except it stays attached to the place.
- Share it. On a share link the client gets the same side by side view, discs and notes. Clients you invite by email reply on the notes in the browser with text, photos or a sketch of their own, free, with no account to set up. Public and password-protected links are view-only.
If the E57 has a coordinate system, its photos are also placed on the site map and its notes carry over to the next georeferenced scan of the site. If it does not, the side by side view still works from the scan positions in the file, and its notes stay with that scan.
When an E57’s 360s do not help
To be straight about the limits:
- Not every E57 has photos in it. Whether images are written depends on the scanner and the export settings. If your E57 has none, Swyvl opens it as a point cloud only. How to share an E57 file covers checking for them before you send.
- The photos are only as good as the scanner’s camera. Older scanners captured low-resolution or HDR-less images. A dedicated 360 camera can look better, but its photos will not line up with the scan.
- Converting loses them. LAS and LAZ store points only. If your pipeline converts E57 to LAZ for delivery, the photos and scan positions are dropped. See LAS vs LAZ vs E57 for when to use which.
- Carrying notes to the next scan needs a coordinate system. Notes show on a later scan only when both scans are georeferenced, and for now they show in your workspace, not on share links. A scan in a local grid keeps its own notes.
- Swyvl does not process scans. Registration, cleaning and colorizing still happen in your scanner software.
The short version
A 360° photo shows what is there. A point cloud says where it is and how big. An E57 that keeps its photos lets you do both from one place: measure on the photo, pin the note on the thing itself, sketch over it, and send the client one link where all of it is waiting. Scan a georeferenced site again next year and the notes are already there.
Related
- How to share an E57 file with a client who has no software
- What is an E57 file?
- Point cloud sharing on Swyvl
- Notes and sketches
- Measuring in Swyvl
Create a free Swyvl account and upload an E57 with its 360s. No credit card.