Originally created during a collaboration between Telecom ParisTech and the R&D division of EDF, the CloudCompare project began in 2003 with the PhD of Daniel Girardeau-Montaut on Change detection on 3D geometric data.

[2] At that time, its main purpose was to quickly detect changes in 3D high density point clouds acquired with laser scanners in industrial facilities (such as power plants) or building sites.

CloudCompare provides a set of basic tools for manually editing and rendering 3D points clouds and triangular meshes.

A dynamic color rendering system helps the user to visualize per-point scalar fields in an efficient way.

CloudCompare can also import various other formats: Aveva PDMS '.mac' scripts (supported primitives: cylinder, plane, cone, torus, dish, box, snout and profile extrusion), SOI (from old Mensi Soisic scanners), PN, PV, POV, ICM, etc.