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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Select LAS Files Graphically in LP360

Ever get frustrated trying to find one of your project LAS files in the LAS Files Table of Contents window? The Select LAS Files Graphically button is the tool you need. Simply click the Select LAS files graphically button and then select the LAS tile that you want to find. The corresponding LAS file is…

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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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LP360 Has a Set of Four Tools Accessed Via ArcToolbox

Note: While the Arctoolbox tools are still an option within the product, the introduction of LAS File Analyst in v2018.1 and the ReProject/Shift LAS PCT in v2017.1, the new tools provide more efficient and robust tools and are now the recommended tools to use. LP360 has a set of four tools that can be accessed…

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Adding the 3rd Dimension to Imagery

We often think of using LIDAR data either in simple operations for generating derived products, such as creating gridded elevation files, or for more esoteric operations, such as automatic extraction of building footprints. However, LIDAR data included as a standard layer in your ArcGIS® project (using LP360 for ArcGIS®, of course) can prove very useful,…

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Colorized Point Clouds take on Role of 3D Image

In a visual world an image is easily recognizable to viewers when compared to a monochrome point cloud and can be one of the biggest challenges when a new person attempts to interpret LIDAR data sets for the first time. The LAS format (v1.2 and later) supports the storage of point color values directly within…

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Adding LIDAR Data to LP360

For those familiar with ArcGIS, yet new to using LP360, how to add LIDAR data to LP360 for ArcGIS is often confusing. Typical first instinct is to use ESRI’s Add Data Button to load your LIDAR data into the program. The problem is that using this button will add each LIDAR file to a separate…

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Macro Quality Control (QC) before Micro QC

In order to minimize the amount of effort required for performing quality control on data it is best to run macro-level quality control checks to quickly assess whether to invest the labor in micro-level quality assessments. Hillshade images can be used as part of a quick quality control analysis by providing an overview perspective on…

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