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If you're trying to publish points clouds with ROS that you're generating algorithmic-ally say then you just need to create a pcl::PointCloud object. You can publish these directly without needing to convert them into messages types. If you this isn't the question you're asking let me know and I'll post a different example for you.
The following C++ example publishes a point cloud of 1000 random points once a second on the topic "cloud_topic" Hope this helps.
#include <stdio.h>
#include <ros/ros.h>
#include <pcl_ros/point_cloud.h>
int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
// setup ros for this node and get handle to ros system
ros::init(argc, argv, "PCD file publisher");
ros::start();
// get node handle
ros::NodeHandle n;
ros::Rate loopRate(1.0);
std::string topicName = "cloud_topic";
ros::Publisher demoPublisher = n.advertise<pcl::PointCloud<pcl::PointXYZ> >(topicName.c_str(),10);
ROS_INFO("Publishing point cloud on topic \"%s\" once every second.", topicName.c_str());
while (ros::ok())
{
// create point cloud object
pcl::PointCloud<pcl::PointXYZ> myCloud;
// fill cloud with random points
for (int v=0; v<1000; ++v)
{
pcl::PointXYZ newPoint;
newPoint.x = (rand() * 100.0) / RAND_MAX;
newPoint.y = (rand() * 100.0) / RAND_MAX;
newPoint.z = (rand() * 100.0) / RAND_MAX;
myCloud.points.push_back(newPoint);
}
// publish point cloud
lidarScanPublisher.publish(myCloud.makeShared());
// pause for loop delay
loopRate.sleep();
}
return 1;
}