fishnet grid and slope distance

[NicoTripcevich]

Hello I'm trying to create a fishnet of points for regular sampling (our project is in UTM CRS). Previous research used tape and compass so in high slope areas we are working with slope distance not flat, isotropic distance. 

This year we've adopted RTK GNSS so we can use stakeout quickly to quickly locate these sampling points and it's much faster than tape and compass approach. However our sampling interval is way off on high-slope areas because it isn't using slope distance.

Is there a tool that can effectively project a fishnet onto a lidar 3d surface to provide a fishnet grid of points that approximates slope distance? There will obviously be some distortion but RTK Stake out is really fast and we'd appreciate being able to generate fishnet ahead of time.

[CodyPatterson]

Hey @NicoTripcevich 

You may be able to create a elevation model or terrain model, DEM or DTM, and then use the LAS Dataset to REster tool to convert it over to a Raster DEM. I'd then use the Create Fishnet tool to generate the fishnet you're wanting, and then you may be able to drape it over the raster with some tips from this here:

https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-pro-questions/3d-scene-drape-image-over-3d-layers/td-p/1071396

Cody

[NicoTripcevich]

Thank you Cody. As I understand it "drape" is simply a way to visually pin a raster (like an satellite image) to an underlying terrain. I'm hoping to navigate to these grid corners with RTK GNSS.
If the Fishnet tool generated 3d vectors with Z values and had a "base height" option to pin the output to terrain then that could work.
It's essentially a very localized projection onto an irregular digital terrain model. I wonder if some of the custom ESRI projection tools (Define New Coordinate System) tools could be applied to this task and then use the Project (Dataset) tool to reproject an existing fishnet into the 3d terrain.