LiDAR - data storage and management in SDE

[PhilipHealey]

Anyone storing raw LiDAR data in SDE?

[larryzhang]

Philip,

Pretty sure that most wouldn’t store massive LiDAR data into SDE, especially, in production.

In fact, managing LiDAR is very much similar to any raster imagery and terrain data (DEM), which are usually managed in FGDB via Mosaic Dataset model, even though you can still use enterprise GDB. 

[XanderBakker]

LiDAR data is a pointcloud, from which you can derive raster data. LiDAR data is normally provided as LAS files. You do not want to store the point clouds in your SDE database. In ArcGIS you work with LAS data using LAS datasets.

Some links:

• What is lidar: ArcGIS Help (10.2, 10.2.1, and 10.2.2)
• A quick tour of lidar in ArcGIS: ArcGIS Help (10.2, 10.2.1, and 10.2.2)
• Creating a LAS Dataset: ArcGIS Help (10.2, 10.2.1, and 10.2.2)

[larryzhang]

In some cases, users may still want to store LAS datasets in SDE, even though this approach is not common, especially, in research projects.

For example, after importing from LAS files, the low-level security of LAS datasets can still be managed via SDE, just like Mosaic Datasets, even though not common.

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On LAS datasets imported from LAS files, there are some disadvantages. For example, ArcGIS couldn't do any helps diectly for LAS data files. In other word, the high quality of LAS data files are required, before loading into LAS datasets.

Refer to the blog at Noise Removal and Manual Classification in LAS Cloud

[PhilipHealey]

Thank you Larry