38 articles Terrasolid Tools, Tips and Workflows

GeoCue Group’s repository of knowledge base articles and FAQs covering Terrasolid tools, tips and workflows.

Creating dz Images

Relative vertical accuracy, or flight line offsets, or the swath-to-swath fit between flight lines or drive passes can be qualitatively assessed using dz images. Or quantitatively assessed by exporting and analyzing the values. The USGS LiDAR Base Specification has evolved over the years with some different recommendations for evaluating interswath (overlap) consistency, and there are…

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Processing TrueView Images in TerraPhoto

TrueView 3DIS (3D Imaging Systems) produce images and positional information which can be imported into TerraPhoto for orthomosaic generation, point cloud colorization, powerline workflow – image view, etc. Here we’ll review the process for importing this data into TerraPhoto, which includes: exporting a photo package from TrueView Evo/LP360 Drone, rename the images for import into…

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Making Use of Extra Bytes

Officially introduced in the LAS v1.4 specification, Extra Bytes is a mechanism which allows a developer to define extra data fields of various types. They are a means to extend the LAS format to add additional information to each point, literally

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Affine Transform LAS PCT

The Affine Transform LAS Point Cloud Task is a versatile tool for modifying the coordinates of your point cloud. A common use is applying grid to ground conversions which require more than a simple scale or translation. How to setup the Affine Transform LAS Point Cloud Task to accomplish this may not be readily apparent…

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Derive Grid to Ground Transformation with TerraScan

For certain projects, it may be necessary to process and output derivative products in a user defined (local) coordinate system. There are multiple ways to accomplish this, but one is to have matching pairs of projected and local coordinates to define a local coordinate system and derive the transformation. If the rotation, scale and translation…

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Apply a Horizontal Rotation about an Origin Point

This post applies if your grid to ground conversion requires needing to apply a horizontal rotation about an origin point and is defined by: Horizontal Translation North (tN) Horizontal Translation East (tE) Horizontal Rotation (Rz) Horizontal Origin Northing (N0) Horizontal Origin Easting (E0) Horizontal Scale Factor Then, if the horizontal scale factor is one, luckily,…

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Applying a Horizontal Scale about an Origin Point

This post applies if your grid to ground conversion requires applying a horizontal scale about an origin point and is defined by: Horizontal Origin Northing (N0) Horizontal Origin Easting (E0) Horizontal Scale Factor Scale based grid to ground transformations are probably the most common. If the origin point is not defined, it is usually implied…

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Z Bump – Debias Operation Validity Testing

A common practice amongst GeoCue customers (and internally) is to use previously established control points to compare with an sUAS produced point cloud to gather absolute accuracy statistics. The vertical mean error from these statistics is often used to “Debias” a dataset. This is simply shifting the point cloud data to match the measured control…

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Raster Bit Depth

GeoCue, Terrasolid and LP360 can all output Raster files with different Bit Depths. The bit depth (sometimes called pixel depth) of a cell determines the range of values that a particular raster file can store, which is based on the formula 2n (where n is the bit depth). For example, an 8-bit raster can have…

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Metashape – Orthomosaic formatting for MicroStation and TerraPhoto Reference

MicroStation and TerraPhoto reference  require a RGB orthomosaic image. The normal workflow for exporting sUAS derived orthomosaics from Metashape creates a RGBA image. Make sure the “Write Alpha Channel” setting in the screenshot below is unchecked to create a RGB orthomosaic in Metashape before attempting to import into TerraPhoto.

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