For a general discussion on file naming, please refer to the general section on Planning for the Creation of Digital Data. As a good rule of thumb, file names should be logical and should not contain special characters. In the metadata sections below, file names are suggested for each of the interim data sets generated from processing scan data. For example, it is suggested that all datasets be prefixed by the project name followed by a brief description or shorthand of what the dataset contains.

Registered point clouds for example should be called “projectname_GR.txt” to indicated that the file contains a point cloud data set that has been globally registered.

As another example, mesh files should be described as “projectname_origmesh.obj” to describe an original full resolution mesh or “projectname_decimesh_50pcnt.obj” to describe a decimated mesh and the amount of data reduction from the original. The file naming suggestions in this document are not required for archive but if used, can provide a good framework for structuring scanning projects.