meshlab VS ModernGL

MeshLab is free software that can work with point clouds. I've only used data in .ply format so I'm not sure what other formats are supported.

I used a program called Radiant to convert to STL and then did some small edits using Meshlab.

The best open source way I have found is using MeshLab

You could start by importing the point cloud model into a software with native support for the file format. Some open source examples are Meshroom (https://alicevision.org) or Meshlab (https://www.meshlab.net). There are other softwares from companies like Autodesk that might be more intuitive but you'd need licenses to use them. Rhino and Blender can handle the file formats but might struggle depending on the size and complexity.

Maybe MeshLab

Also have a look at this repo https://github.com/NCCA/ModernGL/ which has a load of different demos using different libraries for Context generation and extension loading.

If you follow the instructions I give to my students here https://github.com/NCCA/NGL/blob/main/Windows.md up to the vcpkg install. You can then install GLEW via vcpkg and try something like this https://github.com/NCCA/ModernGL/tree/master for your OpenGL demos.

See if these simple demos work for you https://github.com/NCCA/ModernGL/tree/master (I write these on a mac first if I can, you just need vcpkg and cmake to build).

Also a full working demo to draw a triangle https://github.com/NCCA/ModernGL/tree/master/SDL2TriangleGLEW It uses GLEW on Windows and Linux but defines it out on the Mac, You need CMake and SDL2 installed using vcpkg but you can adapt to your install

I have a number of demos here that use various libs to create a modern OpenGL triangle https://github.com/NCCA/ModernGL

I use glfw with vcpkg which will download and build it for you. Makes things a little easier as you can do it all with CMake. This example (showing OpenGL and GLEW with GLFW) should give you all you need if you want to do it this way. https://github.com/NCCA/ModernGL/tree/master/GLFWTriangleGLEW

You need to ensure you use either a full core profile context or an old compatibility OpenGL 2.1 context, you can't mix and match (Like in Windows / linux). Also Vertex Array Objects are mandatory for core profile on the mac (on some older systems you can get away without using them). Personally I use either Qt or SDL2 for creating the context but you can also use other frameworks. I've got a load of simple demos using different frameworks here https://github.com/NCCA/ModernGL Including one that uses the Objective C / coca for creating the window / context.

Here is a basic example drawing a coloured triangle using two buffers, https://github.com/NCCA/ModernGL/blob/master/PyQtTriangle/PyQtTriangle.py You can modify this to draw points quite easily by changing the glDrawArrays(GL_TRIANGLES, 0, 3) call to use GL_POINTS

Creating the context you have a few options, SDL2, GLFW Qt or native mac. I wrote a series of demos to draw a basic triangle https://github.com/NCCA/ModernGL Each one uses a different tool / library. It uses cmake and vcpkg to install all the libs you need etc.