Have you been to Autodesk Labs? Do you wish there was more you could do with Point Clouds inside Civil 3D? Some ground breaking things if you click “more” below.
So a little breakdown of what Autodesk Labs is (http://labs.autodesk.com/). If you’ve heard of the beta programs, well, this isn’t even that. Beta is software that’s nearly ready, it just needs some user testing to get it finished. Labs software is something Autodesk has been working on and is willing to share with the general public. Beta programs, you must be accepted to use.
Labs is software that is very pre-release….you know what, just read this http://labs.autodesk.com/about/.
Remember, though that Labs software is temporary. Most of the applications time bomb at a certain date and will not work after that. You may or may not see any of these tools in future releases.
So, on to our story. Point Clouds. http://labs.autodesk.com/utilities/civil3d_pointcloud/
There are 3 main areas where this tool will help Civil 3D users. Without using up any more bandwidth here, I’ll just forward you to the existing video links and you can see for yourself.
- Point cloud classification. You can easily classify objects in your cloud like buildings, wires, and trees, and colour these points.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDLAs2z9sC0 - Ground surface creation and segmentation. Filter out non-ground point data like trees, buildings, and wires from the cloud and make a TIN surface.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSVv5eMc_UI - Road feature extraction. Creates 3D polylines from road features within the selected point cloud.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q19xXX7P1yg
Some pretty nifty features here and those aren’t all. Go to the site and find out what else can be done.
Enjoy,
Matt
