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Components view (Workspace pane)

Status: documented (2026-05-24).

What it is

The Components view, available in the Workspace pane on Metashape 1.7+, displays the connected components of the chunk's tie-point graph after alignment. Each component is a sub-set of cameras the bundle solved as one rigid block; two cameras are in the same component if and only if there's a path of shared tie points between them.

A healthy alignment produces one component containing all cameras. Multiple components signal that the bundle has not found a globally-consistent solution — even if every camera reports as aligned, the chunk is internally split into disconnected sub-blocks held together only by the shared chunk transform (georeferencing, etc.). This is the "ghosting" symptom: the model looks coherent but exhibits seams or duplications between sub-blocks.

Where it lives

Standard Pro
GUI Workspace pane → click on a chunk → expand the Tie point cloud node → expand the Components sub-node (same)
Python chunk.components (list) and chunk.component (active component) (Pro only)
Available since Metashape 1.7 Metashape 1.7

How to inspect components in Python

import Metashape

chunk = Metashape.app.document.chunk

# Number of components — the headline diagnostic.
print(f"components: {len(chunk.components)}")

# Per-component camera count.
for i, comp in enumerate(chunk.components):
    aligned = sum(1 for c in chunk.cameras
                  if c.transform is not None
                  and c in comp.cameras)
    print(f"  component {i}: {aligned} aligned cameras")

# The "active" component (the one the GUI considers default).
print(f"active component: {chunk.component}")

A len(chunk.components) > 1 outcome is an alignment-quality red flag, regardless of how many cameras report as aligned.

What components mean for downstream stages

  • Build Dense Cloud / Depth Maps: typically processes the active component only by default (verify on the Reference pane's region setting). Cameras in non-active components may be silently excluded.
  • Build Mesh / Build Tiled Model: depends on the source data (depth maps follow component-active; tie-point-driven mesh uses the whole tie point cloud). Mixing components in a single mesh produces visible seams.
  • Export: orthomosaic / point-cloud exports respect whatever the active component plus chunk region defines. Multi-component chunks need mergeComponents() first to produce a single coherent output.

Merging and splitting components

# Merge all components into one. Used after a manual fix
# (markers, transform import) brings the components close
# enough that the bundle should solve them as one.
chunk.mergeComponents()

# Split a single component into multiple by some criterion.
# Rarely needed; the typical path is mergeComponents after
# a fix.
chunk.splitComponents()

mergeComponents() does NOT add new tie points across component boundaries — it only marks the components as merged in the bundle's bookkeeping. To genuinely connect disconnected components, you need either marker-based linkage (markers projecting on cameras from both components) or cross-block matching (matchPhotos(cameras=[…], reset_matches=False) with carefully-chosen camera lists); see mergeChunks does not deduplicate cameras and Adding cameras to an aligned chunk: the keep_keypoints workflow for the architectural strategies.

Caveats

  • Component count vs aligned-camera count. A chunk with 100 cameras all reporting c.transform is not None but 4 components is worse than 100 cameras aligned in 1 component, even though both report 100% aligned. The diagnostic value is in the component count, not the aligned-camera count.
  • chunk.component (singular) is the active component. Switching the active component changes which sub-block Build Dense Cloud / orthomosaic operations target. The default is the largest component.
  • Components is a 1.7+ feature. Older PhotoScan / Metashape versions do not expose this view; the bundle still has the same connected-components structure internally, but you can't see it from the GUI.
  • Tie point cloud — the structure that defines components via shared-track membership.
  • Chunks and merging — the multi-chunk architecture that motivates component-aware workflows.

Articles in this manual

Forum threads worth reading

Date Version Author Thread One-line takeaway
stub stub stub stub Populated as insight cards on this feature accumulate.