Installation on Windows 64bit OS

There are two ways to install it on Windows. Please choose a preferred manner.

• Install individual packages for Windows (Refer to the following instructions to install)
• Install in a virtual Linux environment such as ubuntu Linux of WSL(Windows Subsystem of Linux)(install according to the installation guide for ubuntu). If you use WSL other than Ubuntu Linux, please replace each required package for each OS and try the installation. Xwindow operating environment is required to use GUI tools.

0. Paths with whitespaces

Some Python tools have trouble with paths that have whitespaces. Before installing HomCloud, please check your username and other paths for spaces.

1. Python installation

Download the 64-bit python installer (here, Windows x86-64 web-based installer is taken as an example) from https://www.python.org/downloads/windows/ and click to install. HomCloud supports Python 3.11, and 3.12 (Mar. 20, 2024). This installation guide uses Python 3.11.

2. Create a new virtual environment by venv

On this page, we install HomCloud using venv, which can create lightweight virtual environments. You can easily use different versions of HomCloud using venv.

Start the command prompt． You can find it by searching for Windows administration tools→command prompt． First, you should make a working directory. In this example, let's name the directory homcloud:

mkdir homcloud
cd homcloud

You can create a new virtual environment in the working directory:

py -3.11 -m venv venv311

Then, a directory whose name is venv311 is created. The files in the virtual environment are stored in this directory. Note that if the folder name contains non-alphanumeric characters, it will not work. Note that the parent folder must not also be included.

3. Enter the venv's virtual environment

Type as follows to enter the virtual environment:

venv311\Scripts\activate

This operation is required every time the command prompt is launched.

4. Installation of Python packages and HomCloud

Install the required package as follows in the virtual environment.

pip install numpy pyqt5 pyqt6 wheel "pyvista[all,trame]" pyvistaqt 
pip install homcloud

5. Run HomCloud's self-checking program

Finally, run the following in a command prompt to find out if it was successfully installed.

python -m homcloud.self_check --pyvista

After starting, a window with the following image will be opened. Please close the window.

The installation succeeds if the following message is shown in the terminal.

HomCloud version: 4.4.0
Python version: 3.10.12 (main, Nov 20 2023, 15:14:05) [GCC 11.4.0]
CGAL version: 5.6 (1050601000)
Alpha Shape 3 ... ok
Alpha Shape 3 with weights ... ok
Periodic Alpha Shape 3 with weights ... ok
Alpha Shape 2 ... ok
Grayscale 2D bitmap ... ok
Binary 2D bitmap ... ok
Binary 2D periodic bitmap ... ok
Rips filtration ... ok
Plotting PD ... ok
Optimal Volume ... ok
PyVista 3D drawing (close the pop-up window)... ok

The installation is now complete!

6. Running the tutorial

Now we try HomCloud tutorials. First, install jupyter as follows:

pip install jupyter

Next, download the tutorial from python-tutorial.zip and extract it to the homcloud folder. After that, type the following in homcloud folder:

jupyter notebook

Then, the browser will pop up, and the jupyter notebook will start. Start the tutorial here from the tutorials folder. There are some tutorials, but pointcloud is the easiest to do.