"Memory Allocation Failure" displaying TIN in Power Geopak SS4

Question

I have several LAS files from Lidar data that was shot across several miles of a road. I'm being given the .las files and have to clip them and stitch them together (there are about 40 of them all together) to get the best data and create the best total surface of the project. My first method of bringing in the data was to import the .las with the Terrain Model and export it as a .tin. This worked, however just this one piece, which is one of the larger pieces, came out to be a 650 MB .tin. My goal was to convert all of the .las files to .tin and then clip and merge them together. Does anyone know of a way I can begin getting the .tin files to be smaller so I can work with them or is there a different way I should be going about bringing in and converting the .las files. 
 
 Thanks, 
 
 Jervis

MichaelGilham · Accepted Answer

Hi Jervis, 
 
this may be too late, but here's the method I'd be using for the task you have. 
1) Attach the LiDAR data to an empty DGN file as PointClouds using the MicroStation PointCloud tools. 
2) Open the DGN in GEOPAK (point clouds should still be visible). 
3) Use the Terrain tools to build a "terrain" from the Point Clouds. You should set a MicroStation fence around the area of interest to limit the amount of data that is imported. Also, there are filtering options within the "create" tool to allow you to filter the point cloud information. Typically, I’d use the "TIN" filter option and set the filter value to whatever the expected accuracy of the point cloud. There is an option to test the filter which will tell you how many points will be extracted to the Terrain. If there's more than a couple of million, you might want to change the filter value OR make the fence smaller an develop a number of terrain objects. 
4) Once you have the terrain objects created, they can be exported to GEOPAK TIN files for use with the other GEOPAK tools. 
 
There are videos that show this process. The link that Nico provided will take you to those. 
Unfortunately, when I tried to access the video's the links didn’t work - but that could be the IT rules here in the office causing that. 
Give them a try. 
 
HTHs, 
Michael

Nico Roman · Answer

There is no way to further compress a tin file. I would not recommend merging together big tins because they would be hard to work with and probably cause your machine to run out of memory. 
 communities.bentley.com/.../3137