Background

Many companies are begining to use point cloud survey data (i.e lidar) and need to be able to bring this data into MX as a model.

Steps to Accomplish

1. Load the Point Cloud into the display using the Point Cloud tool (File>Point Clouds).
   
   
   
   Some of the point cloud formats that can be imported are shown below.
   
   
   
   The point cloud data will alway be converted over to the Pointtools format POD and the file saved in the same folder as the orginal data.

2. Load the Data Acquisition tool from the Tasks panel.
   
   
   
   The Data Acquisition and Data Acquisition Details panels will load as below.
   
   
   
   

3.  Load the Point Cloud as a Surface into the Data Acquisition panel.
   
   
   
   Right click on Surfaces and select Import from Point Clouds. This will create a new surface which inherits the name of the POD file.

4.  The Point Cloud Filter panel will appear.
   
   
   
   A filter will be required for large pointcloud data sets to make it managable for use in MX. The Filter options are:
   
   

   Tile Filter  - The tiling algorithm is a recursive divide and conquer algorithm that divides the LIDAR data set into tiles. A best fit plane is calculated for each tile, and LIDAR points are removed if they fall within the user set Z tolerance to the plane.

   TIN Filter - The TIN algorithm filters LIDAR points if they fall within the user set Z tolerance of the triangle planes. The TIN algorithm first tiles the LIDAR points into tiles with a maximum of 2 million points and then repetitively triangulates each tile filtering out points.

   No Filter - No filtering is applied.
   
   Select Apply to apply the filter.

5. Re-name the surface to a desirable name for the MX Model (MX model naming rules need to be followed).
   
   
   
   Do this in the Data Acquisition Details panel by clicking into the Name field.

6. Export the surface to an MX Model.
   
   
   
   Right click on the surface in the Data Acquisition panel and select export to MX modelfile. Select the model.fil for the project and select Save.
   
   

   In the model.fil of the project there will now be a triangulation model with the name you selected in the Data Acquisition Details panel.

See Also

MX TechNotes And FAQs