Visual Learning Systems LIDAR Analyst Enhancements

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ENHANCEMENTS

LIDAR Analyst® 4.2

The latest version of LIDAR Analyst comes enhanced with a new interface for access to parameter settings, which control the accuracy and level of detail in extraction of terrain and culture features. This provides clients with a higher level of control during the extraction of 3D terrain and cultural features from airborne LIDAR data.

Software improvements include:

Improved Spatial Referencing of DEMs with the capability to view and define the spatial reference information during generation of a DEM.
Optimizations implemented for all the underlying algorithms to allow them to run faster, as well as on systems with very low resources.
Improved Attribution Tools: A process was added to LIDAR Analyst that allows the user to update the attributes for their extracted tree crown points and forest polygon shape files.

New and important tools and features in this release include:

Batch Processing: A command has been added that allows users to take models developed from extractions (i.e. bare earth, buildings, trees) and apply them to multiple datasets.
Export to Google Earth; A command was added that allows users to export feature results to the KML file format. KML is a file format used to display geographic data in an Earth browser, such as Google Earth. The export settings allow you to specify the attributes, colors, and icons for display of features.
Extract Contour Lines: A command was added to allow users to extract contour lines from any DEM. Users can specify the number of contours to output and the software will automatically detect the appropriate elevation ranges. Users can also specify a smoothness tolerance to reduce the number of vertices.
Control Point Analysis: A tool has been added which allows users to compare extracted elevation values (i.e. from a bare earth DEM) to ground truth control points that are stored in a shape file. The output is in CSV file format which can be imported into Excel.
Assign Coordinate System to LAS File command allows the user to copy an LAS file to a new LAS file and assign it a new spatial reference.
Convert LAS File to Raster Dataset: A command with which the user can specify all the rasters that need to be generated from an LAS point cloud and have them all returned in a single process. On point clouds containing only one return data, the command allows for the output of a Single Return DEM and an intensity image. On multiple return point clouds, the interface will allow the user to generate the First Return, Last Return and Intensity images.
Modify buildings:

Extract Multi Component Buildings.
Extract Complex Buildings.
Building Reshape tool - updates z-values and attributes after edits.
Building Auto-Split tool - updates z-values and attributes after edits.
Courtyard Cleanup tool - updates z-values and attributes after edits.

Edit DEM:

Bare-earth modification tools allow the user to add and remove points as well as regions used for bare-earth generation.
DEM editing tools allow the user to modify DEMs by defining regions to apply various DEM modification processes.

Import LIDAR data returns in a variety of point feature and gridded data formats including .LAS, ASCII, GeoTIF and ArcGRID.
Output terrain and culture features: bare-earth (raster), buildings (vector), trees (vector), and forests (vector) .
Classify LAS point clouds based upon user settings and LIDAR Analyst extractions.