.. _filters.sample:

===============================================================================
filters.sample
===============================================================================

The practice of performing Poisson sampling via "Dart Throwing" was introduced
in the mid-1980's by [Cook1986]_ and [Dippe1985]_, and has been applied to
point clouds in other software [Mesh2009]_.

The sample filter performs Poisson sampling of the input ``PointView``. The
sampling can be performed in a single pass through the point cloud. To begin,
each input point is assumed to be kept. As we iterate through the kept points,
we retrieve all neighbors within a given ``radius``, and mark these neighbors as
points to be discarded. All remaining kept points are appended to the output
``PointView``. The full layout (i.e., the dimensions) of the input ``PointView``
is kept in tact (the same cannot be said for :ref:`filters.voxelgrid`).

.. seealso::

    :ref:`filters.decimation` and :ref:`filters.voxelgrid` also perform
    decimation.

.. embed::

Options
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

radius
  Minimum distance between samples. [Default: **1.0**]
