I think the best approach might be to use ArcMAP's 3D Analyst. There is a plugin called VRMESH for ArcGIS which works on extraction of features from pointclouds in ArcGIS that can be stored in the geodatabase for use in CityEngine. I usually use the multipatch feature class.
I've worked with it to automatically extract buildings from Lidar and Imagery point clouds, but would be interested in seeing if it can do piping.
I think the virtualgrid staff are working on automatically extracting powerlines as well, so this might work well with the piping you are trying to do.
There's no tools in CityEngine to process LIDAR data. You could convert the point clouds to e.g. kml files and bring those in as 'Static Models'.
What would you like to do with your specific data ?
Let me know.
m.
There are 2 uses for 3D Laser Scanning - topography and piping:
1) Get topography (generate DEMs/DTMs).
2) Inside our industrial facility, we have rack after rack of pipes, we would like to scan these and extract the pipes into our existing ArcGIS piping Geodatabase.
With ArcGIS being primarily a 2D software, there seems to be no way to manage Geodatabase feature classes using 3D for piping. Unless, 3D Analyst is an option?
Does CityEngine store attributes for features in a Geodatabase? or is it primarily a visualization tool?
Could I do a 3D laser scan of a bunch of piping, then bring this into CityEngine as a kml, then hand digitize the pipes into a Geodatabase and view the pipes and attribute data in 3D using CityEngine or 3D Analyst?
I think the best approach might be to use ArcMAP's 3D Analyst. There is a plugin called VRMESH for ArcGIS which works on extraction of features from pointclouds in ArcGIS that can be stored in the geodatabase for use in CityEngine. I usually use the multipatch feature class.
I've worked with it to automatically extract buildings from Lidar and Imagery point clouds, but would be interested in seeing if it can do piping.
I think the virtualgrid staff are working on automatically extracting powerlines as well, so this might work well with the piping you are trying to do.
