topic Re: LAS to XYZ format in Geoprocessing Questions

LAS to XYZ format

TinaKwitkoski — Fri, 11 Apr 2014 14:41:07 GMT

I am wondering if there is a way for converting LAS files to ASCII or XYZ format. Our Civil 3D users in the office cannot use LAS files and I have no idea how to help them out. And since GIS is much more efficient to convert data I thought I would ask.

Re: LAS to XYZ format

BondHarper — Fri, 11 Apr 2014 21:34:07 GMT

Civil 3D can definitely use LAS files, so I'm not sure why they told you that. Is this a traditional ground elevation Lidar survey, or is it a ground-based point cloud (like a scan of a 3D object)?

For terrain elevations, in Civil 3D if you go to Create Ground Data, Create Point Cloud, LAS is one of the many options available to pick from. For point clouds of solid objects (like a scan of a bridge), they'll want to use this tool: apps.exchange.autodesk.com/ACD/en/Detail/Index?id=appstore.exchange.autodesk.com%3apointcloudfeatureextraction%3aen

You can convert LAS to multipoint in GIS and from there to a text file, but better to just use LAS in Civil 3D. They can also create surfaces from shapefiles or survey files/contours on your SDE server. Civil 3D is very GIS data friendly. It sounds like these are folks who are used to the older AutoCAD that doesn't support all this functionality.

Re: LAS to XYZ format

IanMurray — Mon, 14 Apr 2014 12:56:44 GMT

I would suggest using an open source tool. LASTools is a great open source tool for handling and converting LAS files. http://www.cs.unc.edu/~isenburg/lastools/

You would need to use the LAS2TXT function and you could get an ascii text file of the lidar data.