How to Cut and Clean Your 3D Models for Delivery and Presentation in Hammer Missions
- Hammer Missions
- 7 hours ago
- 6 min read
Once your drone data has been processed and your 3D model is ready, the next step before sharing with clients or stakeholders is making sure it looks clean, focused, and professional. Neighbouring buildings, cluttered surroundings, and irrelevant geometry can distract from the asset you're actually inspecting — and that's where Hammer Missions' model clipping tools come in.
This guide walks you through how to use both clipping modes to isolate your building and present polished, precise models every time.
Why Cleaning 3D Models Matters
When a drone captures imagery for a 3D reconstruction, it doesn't just capture your target building — it captures everything around it. Neighbouring structures, parked cars, vegetation, and ground clutter all make their way into the final model. While this is a natural part of the photogrammetry process, it's not what your client wants to see in their report or presentation.
Clipping your model serves several important purposes:
It focuses attention on the building or facade being assessed
It removes visual noise that can obscure defects or measurements
It creates a more professional and readable deliverable
It allows you to isolate specific facades for targeted analysis or reporting
Hammer Missions gives you two dedicated clipping tools to handle both of these scenarios — a Polygon Clip for trimming the perimeter of the scene, and a Plane Clip for isolating individual facades of the model itself.
Step 1: Load Your Project and Open the 3D Model
Start by opening your project in Hammer Missions and navigating to your processed 3D model. Once the model has loaded in the viewer, you're ready to begin clipping.
Before you start, take a moment to orbit around the model and assess what needs to be removed. Identify any neighbouring buildings or ground clutter you want to exclude, and note which facades may need to be isolated for presentation.
Step 2: Choose Your Clipping Mode
Hammer Missions offers two clipping planes, each designed for a different purpose:
Polygon Clip — Used to define a boundary around the perimeter of your target building, removing everything outside that boundary (neighbouring buildings, roads, vegetation, etc.)
Plane Clip — Used to slice through the model along a defined plane, allowing you to isolate a specific facade or section of the building
The right tool depends on what you're trying to achieve. In most workflows, you'll use the Polygon Clip first to clean up the scene, and then use the Plane Clip if you need to present individual facades in detail. That said, both tools work independently and can be used in either order.
Step 3: Clipping the Perimeter — Using the Polygon Clip
The Polygon Clip tool lets you draw a custom boundary around your building directly on the model. Anything outside that boundary will be hidden, leaving only the geometry you want to present.
How to use it:
Select the Polygon Clip option from the clipping tools panel
Click on the model or ground plane to begin placing points. Each click drops a new vertex of your polygon — work your way around the perimeter of your target building, placing points to trace its outline
Aim to keep your polygon tight enough to exclude neighbouring structures, but with enough clearance that none of your target building's geometry is accidentally cut
Once you've traced the full perimeter and are satisfied with the shape, close the polygon and click Save Clip
The model will update immediately, hiding all geometry outside your defined boundary. You can continue to orbit, zoom, and inspect the clipped model as normal.
Tips for a clean polygon clip:
Work from a top-down or elevated view angle when placing your polygon points to get the most accurate boundary
If your building has overhanging elements like canopies or protruding cornices, give those edges a little extra clearance in your polygon
On dense urban sites where buildings are close together, zoom in when placing points near shared boundaries to get the precision you need
Step 4: Isolating a Facade — Using the Plane Clip
Once your scene is cleaned up with the Polygon Clip, you may want to go further and isolate a specific facade — for example, to show a client a focused view of the north elevation, or to highlight defects detected on a particular wall.
The Plane Clip tool works differently from the polygon — instead of drawing a boundary, you define and adjust a flat cutting plane that slices through the model, hiding everything on one side of it.
How to use it:
Click the Switch to Planes button to activate the Plane Clip mode
You'll see yellow marker points appear on the edges of the model. These markers define the position and orientation of the cutting plane
Drag the yellow markers to reposition the plane — move them inward to push the cut closer to the facade you want to isolate, or outward to include more of the model
Use the rotation sliders to fine-tune the angle of the cutting plane:
Heading (Z) — Rotates the plane horizontally, useful for aligning the cut to the building's axis if it's not oriented along a cardinal direction
Pitch (Y) — Tilts the plane forward or backward, helpful for angled rooflines or sloped surfaces
Roll (X) — Tilts the plane side to side, useful for fine adjustments on irregular geometry
Once the plane is positioned correctly and the desired facade is cleanly isolated, click Save Clip
Tips for a clean plane clip:
For a standard vertical facade, you'll typically only need to adjust the Heading (Z) slider to align the plane with the wall face — Pitch and Roll can stay at their defaults
Make small, incremental adjustments to the sliders rather than large jumps, especially when fine-tuning around curved or irregular geometry
Orbit the model as you adjust to check the clip from multiple angles before saving — what looks right from the front may cut too deep when viewed from the side
Step 5: Managing and Reviewing Your Clips
Hammer Missions saves every clip you create to a database, so you can return to them, switch between them, and use them across different stages of your workflow without needing to redo your work.
To access your saved clips, click the Manage Clippings button. This opens a panel showing all clips associated with your project, where you can:
Toggle clips on and off to switch between different views of the model
Review and rename clips to keep your deliverables clearly labelled (for example: North Facade, Full Building Clean, East Elevation)
Delete or re-edit clips if you need to refine a boundary or plane position
This is particularly useful when preparing reports that require multiple views of the same building — you can create and save a clip for each facade, then switch between them fluidly during client presentations or when exporting imagery for reports.
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Putting It All Together: A Typical Workflow
For most building envelope inspection deliverables, the recommended approach is:
Process and load your 3D model in Hammer Missions
Apply a Polygon Clip to remove surrounding clutter and isolate the target building in its entirety
Save that as your base clip — this is your clean full-building view
Apply Plane Clips for each facade you want to present individually, saving each one with a clear, descriptive name
Use the Manage Clippings panel to switch between views when annotating defects, preparing measurements, or generating reports
Following this workflow ensures that every model you deliver — whether that's a shareable link, an exported image, or an interactive report — is focused, professional, and immediately useful to your client.
Final Thoughts
Model clipping is one of those features that makes the difference between a raw data dump and a polished, client-ready deliverable. It takes only a few minutes to set up, but the impact on how your work is perceived — and how clearly defects and findings can be communicated — is significant.
Whether you're a building surveyor presenting findings to a property owner, or a drone operator delivering data to an engineering team, clean and well-clipped 3D models demonstrate professionalism and make your reports far easier to act on.
If you have any questions about the clipping tools or want to explore other ways to prepare your models for presentation in Hammer Missions, book a call below:
About Us
Hammer Missions is a software AI firm helping companies in the built environment leverage drones and AI for assessing existing conditions. Having seen 5000+ projects, we're pleased to be working with leading firms in AEC to streamline and scale the process of facade inspections. If you're looking to learn more about how AI can automate and accelerate your building assessment projects, please get in touch with us below. We look forward to hearing from you.
