Point clouds > InRoads DTM ?

It can really depend upon what type of data you receive.

Where I used to work, we used the terrestrial laser scan data as a tool to generate tradition drawings. Sometimes, it was to gather survey data where it was hazardous or inaccessible.

Later, in the office, we would gather survey data from the scan data using Cloudworx with InRoads Survey, creating shots with codes which eventually created the DTM in a very traditional way. In effect, we were field surveying within the software. I often worked with 8 views open, with some showing thin slices - very much like cross sections, to confirm elevations. I used a lot of precision input key-ins to rotate views in small increments, often then copying that view to others and using 90 degree view rotations to create top, front and side view of the same area as a slice. I also use DD= keyins to move into or out from a slice to a new location. The DD= key-in will move the front and back clipping planes in a single step - allowing me to look up or down station at a new slice at whatever increment I wanted.

In areas where there was ground cover, the slices often allowed me to approximate the terrain elevation by looking for the lowest points in a small area as a few scan points would get through all of the cover and give you a close approximation of the low points in an area.

Was this manually intensive - in some ways yes. but we often could be in and out of a scanning site, processing data before we could have gotten through the approval process to have survey crews enter a restricted area to collect traditional survey. And often, one day of scanning could cover an area that would have taken three or more days to collect manually. And sometimes, the client would ask for additional data that was already in the scan data, while a crew would have had to revisit the site to gather the data.

We also used the raw points with InRail for creating tunnel sections. There, we sometimes thinned the points in Cyclone before exporting them to InRoads.

We had clients who were very reluctant to allow us to use the laser scanner because previous firms had simply dumped the scan to ASCII and left it up to them to figure out what to do with the data.

Although I've never used Lidar data, the previous post appears to address that pretty well.

It can really depend upon what type of data you receive.

Where I used to work, we used the terrestrial laser scan data as a tool to generate tradition drawings. Sometimes, it was to gather survey data where it was hazardous or inaccessible.

Later, in the office, we would gather survey data from the scan data using Cloudworx with InRoads Survey, creating shots with codes which eventually created the DTM in a very traditional way. In effect, we were field surveying within the software. I often worked with 8 views open, with some showing thin slices - very much like cross sections, to confirm elevations. I used a lot of precision input key-ins to rotate views in small increments, often then copying that view to others and using 90 degree view rotations to create top, front and side view of the same area as a slice. I also use DD= keyins to move into or out from a slice to a new location. The DD= key-in will move the front and back clipping planes in a single step - allowing me to look up or down station at a new slice at whatever increment I wanted.

In areas where there was ground cover, the slices often allowed me to approximate the terrain elevation by looking for the lowest points in a small area as a few scan points would get through all of the cover and give you a close approximation of the low points in an area.

Was this manually intensive - in some ways yes. but we often could be in and out of a scanning site, processing data before we could have gotten through the approval process to have survey crews enter a restricted area to collect traditional survey. And often, one day of scanning could cover an area that would have taken three or more days to collect manually. And sometimes, the client would ask for additional data that was already in the scan data, while a crew would have had to revisit the site to gather the data.

We also used the raw points with InRail for creating tunnel sections. There, we sometimes thinned the points in Cyclone before exporting them to InRoads.

We had clients who were very reluctant to allow us to use the laser scanner because previous firms had simply dumped the scan to ASCII and left it up to them to figure out what to do with the data.

Although I've never used Lidar data, the previous post appears to address that pretty well.