Can't export point clouds as a ply file I want to export vertices (no mesh exists) as ply file. However, after exporting the data by File->Export->.ply, the generated ply file contains no vertices. Can anyone help? I'm using blender 2.8.

Thanks in advance.
Your assessment is accurate, Blender's ply exporter loops over the triangles. This can be seen in line 90 of export_ply.py. 

for i, f in enumerate(mesh.loop_triangles):


Any vertex that is not part of a face isn't included in the exported mesh in Blender 2.8.