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GeoCue Group’s reference library articles covering a wide variety of geospatial topics related to our various product lines.

Coordinates, Coordinate Systems and LIDAR Data (Part 1)

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…

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Operating Systems – Should you upgrade?

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…

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Available LIDAR Datasets

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.…

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Using Base Maps in ArcGIS

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,…

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Exploring the Geographic Extent of Flooding

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…

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Breaklines, Part 5 – Enforce Varying Elevation

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…

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Breaklines, Part 4 – Enforce Constant Elevation

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…

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Breaklines, Part 3 – Z Conflation

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).…

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Breaklines, Part 2 – Contours

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…

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Breaklines, Part 1 – An Introduction

See the 2018 updated version of this article here. One of the more powerful capabilities within LP360 is breakline capture and enforcement. In fact, many LIDAR production shops use LP360 as their tool of choice for supplementing point cloud data (derived from LIDAR or correlated imagery) with breaklines. But what are breaklines and how should…

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