Drawing Volume Measurements in 3D Mesh

Question

I'm still a bit new to using SiteScan to extract volume from drone flights and I was wondering if there was any way to take volume measurements in the 3D mesh tab of a processed flight? I have a flight of a rock pit we want to further develop, and I want to find the volume of rock that will come out of different areas. I know you can draw a polygon and measure volume in the 2D space in SiteScan and find the net volume, but I want to be able to draw those polygon areas in the 3D mesh tab because the areas I want to measure are more defined in the 3D mesh view (there is a cliff covered by trees that is hard to see in the 2D view and any inclusion of that cliff in the measurement polygon throws off the volume). I know that once you have a polygon drawn in the 2D space, you can view and edit the volume in 3D to use the correct surfaces, but you can't edit the polygon itself, so it would be a lot of tedious trial and error to go back and forth from the 2D space to the 3D volume edit window to get the polygon perfect. I have access to ArcGIS Pro and all the Professional Plus extensions if my problem might be solved easier there, but I have never worked with 3D in ArcGIS Pro before.

NicoBonnafoux · Accepted Answer

Hi @McKenzieBredemeyer,

You can't currently measure volumes from the 3D views in Site Scan.

As you stated, the measurement needs to be made from the 2D view using the Volume Measurement tool, then you can visualize the measurement in 3D, and adjust what base surface is being used for the measurement (a level plane at an elevation you define, lowest/highest elevation plane set at the elevation of the lowest or highest vertex you used to define the boundary, a 3D plane defined by the elevation of all the vertices you used to define the boundary, another mission, or a custom surface you upload as a landXML file).

A tip to help you define the boundary of the area you're trying to measure is to display the Digital Surface Model under the Elevation Data tab, and adjust the display range to highlight the base:

Then, once you open the 3D view of the volume measurement, you can adjust the polygon boundary from the right hand map view. If using a 3D Plane as your comparison surface, make sure all your vertices are at the base elevation to get an accurate measurement, this is particularly important if you are measurement a stockpile on uneven base such as an incline.

For your area covered in part by trees, this can be challenging: you may want to use the Digital Terrain Model (DTM) instead of the DSM. The DTM derived from the point cloud and removes non-ground objects such as trees, but is coarser than the DSM.

I don't have an example that perfectly illustrates your scenario, but here you can see the difference between using the DSM versus DTM, and the tree being removed:

I hope this helps!