LiDar Surface

[awall]

I was supplied with LiDar data in XYZ format.  I import the blocks via point clouds, each seperate block in a seperate point cloud.  The point cloud details show that the cloud contains about 2.5 million points.  When I create a surface from the point cloud it will only use 48 000 points from the 2.5 million.  I combined all my point clouds (27) to create a large surface, and it only contains 77 516 points.  By my calculations it should contain 2.5 million x 27 = 67.5 million.  Is there any way to have my surface contain all the points from the point cloud?

Thanks, 

[ToddRogers-WPM]

Try changing the Point Cloud density to a higher number.  I think by default it is only set to 15 out of 100.

[mathewkol · Accepted solution]

Regardless, your Civil 3D surface will use no more than 1.5M points no matter how large your lidat survey. Big reason I don't use point clouds in C3D.

You're better off to use the Point Files option when making your surface.

[awall]

I have had a very difficult time when importing the lidar data as point files.  Extremely slow and most times Civl 3D will sotp responding.  I open the task manager and it shows its only using 10% of the CPU and 10% of the Ram.

[ToddRogers-WPM]

Matt's right.  You are better off "attaching" the point file.

[dgorsman]

In any event, using every single point of a 60M +/- point scan wouldn't produce much of a difference, except for a horrifically unmanageable file size.  For the most part, the intermediate points will lie on a the surfaces formed from the other points.  They may be a little higher or lower, but shouldn't be signficantly so.

Kind of like modeling every nuance of a thread and rounded bolt head on a screw for a 1:50 drawing.

[awall]

When I increased the point cloud density from the default 15% to 100%, it still only included the same 48 000 points when I would create a surface per point cloud.

[dgorsman]

Probably more like 15%, where you are showing combined activity in a hex-core processor.  If you switched to individual core monitoring, you would see one of the cores pegged at or near 100%.

[mathewkol]

Awall, when I say poit fikes, I don't mean importing COGO points, just to be sure you're not attempting to import 2.5M points. This will fail every time.

I can attach 2.5M points to my surface in minutes with no trouble at all.

[awall]

Matt, it took me a little bit to figure out what you meant, but I understand.  Create a surface and just attach the point files instead of importing the points and creating point groups and attaching them.  It sounds like a much better method than what I had orginally attempted.  I will give it a shot and let you know how it works.  Thanks for the help!

[mathewkol]

Great! I'm glad we're on the same page now. Good luck.

[awall]

So I was able to attach the point files, it created the surface using the correct number of points per block.  I maxed out my surface to about 30 million points and then it would crash everytime I tried to add more.  Broke it up into smaller surfaces and it worked fine.  Thanks for the solution!!