Project Advice: Drawing on point clouds and raster data

[Anonymous]

Hello Autodesk Community,

I am new to AutoCAD and am planning on using it a bit for my graduate thesis work.  I'm a geologist that is using a small autonomous UAV to obtain high-resolution imagery of fluvial deposts.  We are using structure from motion photogrammetry, which in short takes the 2D imagery and produces a 3D point cloud from it.  In addition, the processing software we are using also gives us orthomosiacis and DSMs.

What I would like to be able to comfortably do is to draw boundaries and symbols on to the point cloud (and/or orthomosaics) that can then be used for visulization (e.g. figures) and potentially measurements (e.g. widths and thicknesses).  I've attached a figure from a paper to give a general idea of what I'm kind of looking to do. 

A lot of the tutorials I've seen go into a lot of features of AutoCAD that I don't think I'll be needing. Does anyone know of any helpful tutorials that may be a little more specific in what in what I'd like to accomplish? 

Is Civil 3D the correct software to be using for this kind of work?  

Thank you in advance for any suggestions,

John

[Civil3DReminders_com]

If I was doing the task I'd create a polyline boundary (can be 3DPolyline or a 2D polyline) around the areas of concern. I'd then take my original surface and paste it into the other surfaces. I'd then add the polylines as boundaries to the appropriate surfaces and apply the applicable style to provide the coloring desired.