I remember this issue being brought up during Beta. Here is the response that came from QA on this subject.

The point clouds should come in with the proper scale, if the cloud includes it. If it doesn’t have those units, we assume it is in meters, and the scale of 3.280840 is the conversion of meters to feet...in the future we hope to handle the units more explicitly.

Thanks Jeff.

It's a bit concerning if the Revit file I have open is in millimeters and it is using a 3.280840 scale factor.
I think I'll just submit an official support request, so it can be fixed by Web-update 1 or 2.

Brian

Point Cloud Scale

Bringing this thread back to life....

I primarily work with PTS and PTX point cloud files. From my experience, PTS files come in scaled up 3.280840. I just change the scale to 1.0 and that gives me the correct scaling. On the other hand, PTX files come in a the correct scale. I get the same results inserting point clouds into AutoCAD. The Revit 2012 web update #2 fixes the issue of point clouds not inserting at their true coordinates, but the scale issue makes that fix pointless (no pun intended) for PTS files.

Its all about the order you do it in.

First Make sure you have Autodesk Revit 2012 Update 2 installed on computer. Fixes problem with importing point clouds.

Steps to import cloud:

1) Insert –> Point Cloud
2) Pick One cloud. You may need to select Raw Formats in the “Files of Type” Pull-down.
3) Set “Positioning” pull-down to Auto – Center to Center - Click Open
4) Cloud is converted and Imported.
5) Find cloud, try 3D view if you can’t see in plan. Highlight it Click Edit Type –> Set Scale to 1.0
6) You can manually align the first cloud to a model
7) Move the cloud in the X, Y & Z to align it where you want it.
8) Once you have it aligned well, repeat steps 1-4 for each cloud except Set “Positioning” pull-down to Auto – Origin to Last Placed
9) Clouds should come in next to each other in their proper positions and at the same scale as the first one.

Alternate way of importing / converting clouds

The actual importing of Clouds into Revit takes a long time. It has to index the PTS files into its own proprietary PCG format.

The alternative is using the command line program that Revit uses directly.

The indexer program is called AdPointcloudindexer.exe and is located in the C:\Program folder where Revit is installed.

The command line for the indexer is:

AdPointcloudindexer [/batch] [/pluginspath=PathToPluginsFolder] InputFile [OutputFile]

Where:
InputFile -> must be specified; all other parameters are optional;
OutputFile -> If specified is the resulting PCG file from the conversion. If no file is specified, then the resulting file is same base filename as the input file, and placed in the same folder as the input file. If the output file already exists, a prompt will be provided asking the user if they wish to overwrite it or not.
/batch -> causes the following to be true:No progress will be reported as the indexer operates.
No end of process reporting will be done.
If the output file already exists, an error is generated to stderr and the indexing terminated.
No progress will be reported as the indexer operates.
No end of process reporting will be done.
If the output file already exists, an error is generated to stderr and the indexing terminated.
/pluginspath -> specifies the folder to look for plugins, default is a folder named “plugins\Point Clouds Codecs” under the folder where the indexer exe resides.

*********************

A simple way to run the indexer using the command line is to go to START, Run..., then drag the AdPointcloudindexer.exe file into the run dialog box, Press Spacebar to add a space then drag the file you want to convert into the dialog box as well.
With just those two files in the RUN line, you'll get a PCG file with the same name and in the same location as the original file.

This is quoted from some post I saw somewhere.

You can run as many instances of the program concurrently as you would like. This will convert them to the Revit format and then can be imported directly.

I don't understand this issue of the scale of the point cloud model. I am inserting a cloud file, and the size is wrong. When I go to the properties of the cloud, the "Scale" parameter has that value, 3.280840. But if I change the value to something else, 1 or anything else, the cloud disappears, instead of scaling up an down. It's like the object has a parameter that cannot be used. So... how is one supposed to give the correct size to this cloud object? any help will be appreciated.

Alfredo,
That sounds like a defect. The scale factor parameter should do just what you describe. Please log a support ticket on the issue and we can investigate.

It should also be noted that the need to even care about the scale factor is only an issue with unstructured test-based formats. Most modern binary formats have the units embedded in them, so we just read that data during indexing.

Cheers,
Kyle

Hi, Kyle. I will do some other tests to see if I get the same error, and if it happens again, I will log a support ticket. Thank you for your help.