<p>can anyone explain in the simplest terms please what is the difference between a point cloud and a voxel mesh?</p>

[{'answer_id': 4627, 'author': 'ctag', 'author_id': 1050, 'author_profile': 'https://3dprinting.stackexchange.com/users/1050', 'pm_score': 1, 'selected': False, 'text': '<p>I believe a point cloud is just a collection of points, while voxels - "3D pixels" - define location and a cube area. They seem to be pretty equivalent mathematically.</p>\n'}, {'answer_id': 4635, 'author': 'cmm', 'author_id': 2082, 'author_profile': 'https://3dprinting.stackexchange.com/users/2082', 'pm_score': 3, 'selected': True, 'text': '<p>A point cloud is often derived by sampling.  Each point represents an observation.  Sometimes, a point cloud is turned into a surface by fitting triangles to the points in the form of an STL file.</p>\n\n<p>A raster is a 2D grid of pixels.  It divides the area of an image into constant-sized little squares.  Each of these squares has a value.</p>\n\n<p>A 3D raster is made of voxels.  It divides 3-space into constant-sized little cubes.  Each of these cubes has a value.</p>\n\n<p>Pixels and voxels are rendering techniques.  A point cloud is a sampling technique.</p>\n\n<p>The Wikipedia article, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voxel" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voxel</a>, is helpful.</p>\n\n<p>In a real system the pixels may not be square or the voxels not strictly cubic, but in every system I\'ve worked with, they do form a regular tiling of the plane for pixels, and fill 3d space for voxels.</p>\n'}]
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