GeoCue Group’s reference library articles covering a wide variety of geospatial topics related to our various product lines.
In the previous article, we briefly mentioned coordinate systems while looking at how they played a role when defining the MicroStation design cube and setting up the Terrasolid software. A brief mention was fine for that setup, but if we wish to delve into more details on transformations and changing projections in the various software…
Coordinates and the systems to which they reference can be either a very complex, or a very simple thing depending upon how you look at them. The fact that such possibly complex concepts can be simplified is a blessing and probably very welcomed by many. You’d be surprised by how many people we encounter working…
I recently moved up to a new engineering laptop computer (the new Dell M3800). This is a typical engineering grade laptop with high resolution display, NVidia graphics and GPU, 8 core processor and so forth. This system shipped from Dell with Windows 7 Professional Operating System (OS) rather than Windows 8.1. I found that rather…
LIDAR datasets freely available from multiple providers via the Internet make an excellent source for working with LIDAR data in LP360? In addition, with the new volumetric analysis tools and some additional analysis tools already found in LP360, these free source datasets can make for a convenient means of performing change detection in project areas.…
Did you know that Base Maps are available in ArcMap 10.1 and 10.2? You can use this feature to display a backdrop image or road map, providing context for LIDAR data processing (see Figure 1). This is a coal pile area at the Tennessee Valley Authorities’ (TVA) Widows Creek fossil fuel generation facility near Stevenson,…
GeoCue has had a long association with the Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) where the John A. Dutton e-Education program in the department of Geography uses LP360 in their on-line LIDAR training program. Two of the instructors, Ms. Karen Schuckman and Mr. Mike Renslow, are very well known throughout the LIDAR and photogrammetry communities. Mike…
In the last edition of LP360 News, we discussed the creation of 3D breaklines for enforcing situations where the elevation must be a constant along the breakline. The most common example of this applications is “water body flattening” such as lakes and ponds. In this final installment of the breakline series, we will consider the…
In the last edition of LP360 News, we discussed the creation of 3D breaklines. Recall that, for our purposes, a 3D breakline is a vector that has an elevation value (Z) associated with each vertex. Generally, 3D breaklines can be divided into two categories – those with the same elevation for each vertex (used for…
As we have discussed in the last two issues of LP360 News, breaklines are two- or three-dimensional graphic data (points, lines, polygons) that we introduce into an elevation model to alter the topology. When working with Geographical Information System (GIS) models, we nearly always model complex, irregular elevation data as a Triangulated Irregular Network (TIN).…
In the previous issue of LP360 News, I introduced the use of Triangulated Irregular Networks (TIN) for modeling point derived elevation data as well as the basic concepts of “soft” breaklines. I realized when writing that first article that it is probably a useful exercise to review contours. Thus this part II article will be…
