Run a point could terrain analysis in InfraWorks

Any referenced datasets can be downloaded from "Module downloads" in the module overview.

Transcript

00:01

Using Point Clouds to create the existing conditions model can help reduce errors and ensure accuracy.

00:07

In this unit, you learn to bring a Point Cloud into InfraWorks and use it to create a model.

00:13

And inside InfraWorks, there's a Point Cloud terrain analysis tool.

00:17

This is something you'll run initially before creating all the features, extracting features creating the model.

00:23

And what the Point Cloud terrain analysis tool does is it runs to the point cloud and analyzes things from your ground features,

00:31

linear features, such as roads, curbs, vertical features such as trees, buildings, street lights, and signs.

00:38

So, let's move over to InfraWorks and run the Point Cloud terrain analysis tool.

00:44

So, we're here inside InfraWorks, where we're going to bring in a Point Cloud.

00:48

And we're going to run the Point Cloud terrain and theming tools.

00:51

So, first step is to bring that Point Cloud into our model.

00:56

So, I'm going to turn on my data sources I'm going to come here to connect.

00:59

And I'm going to connect to a Point Cloud.

01:03

File types, RCS, RCP, that's where we need to make sure that we have converted that,

01:08

from whatever format it was, LAS, LAZ, whatever it was, into a Recap file.

01:15

So, in here, I'm going to go to my data set now, and I'm going to go to my Point Cloud.

01:21

See here, I've got RCS and RCP.

01:23

I'm going to choose RCP. In this case, either one, both are the same.

01:27

I'm going to hit "Open".

01:30

Let's double click that in our data sources to configure it.

01:33

Not much to do here other than say close and refresh.

01:38

Going to give it just a moment. We're going to see that Point Cloud come in.

01:42

You can see the detail in that Point Cloud.

01:45

So, you can see our buildings our bridges, our roads, our parking lots,

01:49

and pretty much everything that was captured via drone in this case in that Point Cloud.

01:55

So, that's our first step, we have to bring that Point Cloud in.

01:60

The second step, we're going to run the Point Cloud terrain tool.

02:03

So, here on the Manage tab, Point Cloud panel, I'm going to choose "Point Cloud terrain".

02:09

We have to run this before we start extracting data from that Point Cloud.

02:14

So, I'm going to go ahead and select "Point Cloud terrain".

02:19

Okay, we've got the red tail commercial Point Cloud that we have selected.

02:24

And there's a bunch of rules here. So, we have processing rules for ground, linear, and vertical features.

02:30

We got some presets, less detail, optimum, more detail, some customization that you can do there.

02:37

And you can see kind of the settings there with the custom option.

02:41

I'm going to choose "Optimum".

02:43

And same with linear features, we can adjust those as well.

02:49

The result, what do we want to do with these results?

02:51

Do we want to override the model Point Cloud?

02:54

I like to keep the main Point Cloud, my true data, and also, have the adjusted Point Cloud.

03:00

So, I'm going to turn that off.

03:04

Select proposal for processed Point Cloud.

03:06

It's going to automatically create another proposal that's going to have the process Point Cloud in it.

03:12

Generate the data, lightweight, key points, all points.

03:16

I'll leave it at lightweight.

03:18

Export processed file.

03:19

Let's go ahead and export this out, because maybe I want to create a surface in Civil 3D that is just made from ground shots.

03:26

I want to go ahead and select that.

03:28

And where are we going to save that file to?

03:30

Let's go ahead and save it to our data set somewhere.

03:33

And let's just go ahead and add it to our folder.

03:40

Now, I'm going to start the processing.

03:42

This could be as quick as 10 minutes, an hour. Could take several hours.

03:47

Depending on the size of your model and your settings here on the processing rules,

03:52

we're going to hit start processing and we'll return when that's completed.

03:60

And once that processing is completed, you'll see here in your proposals that we have this processed Point Cloud.

04:09

Okay, so if we've come in here, you can see, if I select that Point Cloud, highlight,

04:13

and hover over that, you can see that it's just now the cleaned-up Point Cloud, a lot of information stripped from there.

04:20

We can see what's been shipped from there. We can see what's within that process Point Cloud by doing a couple of things.

04:25

The first thing we're going to do is just look at a Point Cloud theme.

04:28

So, if I come here to the Manage tab, Point Cloud panel, Point Cloud theme.

04:35

Let's add a new theme.

04:37

And I'm going to call this classification, classification one.

04:44

And you can see there that the analysis type, we have elevation, normal, single color, classification, intensity, elevation plus intensity.

04:52

I'm going to go to classification.

04:55

There are 255 or 256 rules or classification possibilities there.

05:00

We can whittle that down to, say, the first 10.

05:03

So, maybe I want to go 0 to-- we'll go 0 to 20.

05:07

Let's see what happens here, pilot type, we're just going to leave that as is.

05:12

And I'm going hit "OK".

05:16

You've got just a moment, and you can see that the classifications that are about to pop up here on the right side,

05:21

are going to show us all the points within those different areas.

05:24

So, our vegetation, our buildings, our, well, what's really important are grounds.

05:30

You can see there that it's kind of cleaned up.

05:32

It's removed all the information the best it can.

05:36

Remove the cars.

05:38

You can see just the true ground shots.

05:39

A little bit more cleanup we can do in InfraWorks, we'll look at that later.

05:44

But you can see there, just by running that Point Cloud terrain, that you can then extract the information that you want, a bare ground surface.

05:53

Coming up in the next section, we're going to look at Point Cloud Modeling of linear features and vertical features,

05:59

and extract that data and bring it into Civil 3D.

Video transcript

00:01

Using Point Clouds to create the existing conditions model can help reduce errors and ensure accuracy.

00:07

In this unit, you learn to bring a Point Cloud into InfraWorks and use it to create a model.

00:13

And inside InfraWorks, there's a Point Cloud terrain analysis tool.

00:17

This is something you'll run initially before creating all the features, extracting features creating the model.

00:23

And what the Point Cloud terrain analysis tool does is it runs to the point cloud and analyzes things from your ground features,

00:31

linear features, such as roads, curbs, vertical features such as trees, buildings, street lights, and signs.

00:38

So, let's move over to InfraWorks and run the Point Cloud terrain analysis tool.

00:44

So, we're here inside InfraWorks, where we're going to bring in a Point Cloud.

00:48

And we're going to run the Point Cloud terrain and theming tools.

00:51

So, first step is to bring that Point Cloud into our model.

00:56

So, I'm going to turn on my data sources I'm going to come here to connect.

00:59

And I'm going to connect to a Point Cloud.

01:03

File types, RCS, RCP, that's where we need to make sure that we have converted that,

01:08

from whatever format it was, LAS, LAZ, whatever it was, into a Recap file.

01:15

So, in here, I'm going to go to my data set now, and I'm going to go to my Point Cloud.

01:21

See here, I've got RCS and RCP.

01:23

I'm going to choose RCP. In this case, either one, both are the same.

01:27

I'm going to hit "Open".

01:30

Let's double click that in our data sources to configure it.

01:33

Not much to do here other than say close and refresh.

01:38

Going to give it just a moment. We're going to see that Point Cloud come in.

01:42

You can see the detail in that Point Cloud.

01:45

So, you can see our buildings our bridges, our roads, our parking lots,

01:49

and pretty much everything that was captured via drone in this case in that Point Cloud.

01:55

So, that's our first step, we have to bring that Point Cloud in.

01:60

The second step, we're going to run the Point Cloud terrain tool.

02:03

So, here on the Manage tab, Point Cloud panel, I'm going to choose "Point Cloud terrain".

02:09

We have to run this before we start extracting data from that Point Cloud.

02:14

So, I'm going to go ahead and select "Point Cloud terrain".

02:19

Okay, we've got the red tail commercial Point Cloud that we have selected.

02:24

And there's a bunch of rules here. So, we have processing rules for ground, linear, and vertical features.

02:30

We got some presets, less detail, optimum, more detail, some customization that you can do there.

02:37

And you can see kind of the settings there with the custom option.

02:41

I'm going to choose "Optimum".

02:43

And same with linear features, we can adjust those as well.

02:49

The result, what do we want to do with these results?

02:51

Do we want to override the model Point Cloud?

02:54

I like to keep the main Point Cloud, my true data, and also, have the adjusted Point Cloud.

03:00

So, I'm going to turn that off.

03:04

Select proposal for processed Point Cloud.

03:06

It's going to automatically create another proposal that's going to have the process Point Cloud in it.

03:12

Generate the data, lightweight, key points, all points.

03:16

I'll leave it at lightweight.

03:18

Export processed file.

03:19

Let's go ahead and export this out, because maybe I want to create a surface in Civil 3D that is just made from ground shots.

03:26

I want to go ahead and select that.

03:28

And where are we going to save that file to?

03:30

Let's go ahead and save it to our data set somewhere.

03:33

And let's just go ahead and add it to our folder.

03:40

Now, I'm going to start the processing.

03:42

This could be as quick as 10 minutes, an hour. Could take several hours.

03:47

Depending on the size of your model and your settings here on the processing rules,

03:52

we're going to hit start processing and we'll return when that's completed.

03:60

And once that processing is completed, you'll see here in your proposals that we have this processed Point Cloud.

04:09

Okay, so if we've come in here, you can see, if I select that Point Cloud, highlight,

04:13

and hover over that, you can see that it's just now the cleaned-up Point Cloud, a lot of information stripped from there.

04:20

We can see what's been shipped from there. We can see what's within that process Point Cloud by doing a couple of things.

04:25

The first thing we're going to do is just look at a Point Cloud theme.

04:28

So, if I come here to the Manage tab, Point Cloud panel, Point Cloud theme.

04:35

Let's add a new theme.

04:37

And I'm going to call this classification, classification one.

04:44

And you can see there that the analysis type, we have elevation, normal, single color, classification, intensity, elevation plus intensity.

04:52

I'm going to go to classification.

04:55

There are 255 or 256 rules or classification possibilities there.

05:00

We can whittle that down to, say, the first 10.

05:03

So, maybe I want to go 0 to-- we'll go 0 to 20.

05:07

Let's see what happens here, pilot type, we're just going to leave that as is.

05:12

And I'm going hit "OK".

05:16

You've got just a moment, and you can see that the classifications that are about to pop up here on the right side,

05:21

are going to show us all the points within those different areas.

05:24

So, our vegetation, our buildings, our, well, what's really important are grounds.

05:30

You can see there that it's kind of cleaned up.

05:32

It's removed all the information the best it can.

05:36

Remove the cars.

05:38

You can see just the true ground shots.

05:39

A little bit more cleanup we can do in InfraWorks, we'll look at that later.

05:44

But you can see there, just by running that Point Cloud terrain, that you can then extract the information that you want, a bare ground surface.

05:53

Coming up in the next section, we're going to look at Point Cloud Modeling of linear features and vertical features,

05:59

and extract that data and bring it into Civil 3D.

Using PointClouds to create the existing conditions model can help reduce errors and ensure accuracy. In InfraWorks, there is a “Point Cloud Terrain Analysis” tool. You must run point cloud terrain generation to process the data and extract features before using the “Point Cloud Modeling” tool.

Point Cloud Terrain Analysis will classify the following:

• Ground: Classify ground surface points; less detail will be smoother.

• Linear Feature: Classify points representing road curbs, guardrails, and other linework. Aggressive processing will find more linear feature points (even faint ones in the data) than Optimum. Selecting Passive process will find fewer points.

• Vertical Feature: Classify points representing trees, streetlights, and signs.

Let’s get started! Here’s how:

1. Inside our model in InfraWorks, we want to import our point cloud. In the “Data Sources” panel, select the

icon and choose “Point Cloud”.

2. The only two file types InfraWorks will accept are RCS and RCP. If your files are not saved in this format, run it through ReCap first.

3. Select your point cloud and add it into InfraWorks.

4. It will appear in your “Data Sources” list. Double-click the point cloud and review the details. After review, select “Close & Refresh” and let that process and bring it into the drawing.

By taking a closer look, you can see how it adds a more realistic element to your model.

5. Now we want to classify the point cloud and run the terrain analysis tool. Select the “InfraWorks” icon and select the

icon. From there, you will find several options, including “Point Cloud Terrain”, “Point Cloud Modeling”, “Point Cloud Themes”, “Linear Feature Extraction” and “Export Point Cloud…”.

6. Select “Point Cloud Terrain”.

7. In the “Point Cloud Terrain” window that pops up, you will see a list of “Processing Rules”. Here you can edit “Ground”, “Linear” and “Vertical” features. We will set all of those to “Optimum”.

8. Turn off “Override Model Point Cloud”. We want to have the raw data and a new point cloud that it’s going to create. It will create a new proposal called “ProcessPointCloud”.

9. Choose to export “All Points” in the “Export Processed File”.

Your Point Cloud Terrain settings should look something like this:

10. Choose a location to save it in by clicking the link next to “Save File”.

11. Click “START PROCESSING”. Depending on the size of your project, this may take some time as it is classifying millions of points and allowing them to model features.

Once that process has been completed, you can start to run through options and model features.

“Point Cloud Themes”:

1. On the left side of the screen, select “Point Cloud Themes”.

2. We’re going to zoom into the area of our model with lots of vegetation, buildings, cars and more.

3. In the “Point Cloud Themes” panel on the right, select the “+” sign to add a new theme.

4. A window titled “Theme Properties” will appear. Change the “Analysis Type” to “Classification”. Leave the default name of “Classification”.

5. Select “OK”.

You’ll be able to see on the right side of the panel, that the point cloud is now classified. All of this will help you create a surface from this point cloud in Civil 3D.

Now we’re ready to take the next step and extract features.

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Run a point could terrain analysis in InfraWorks

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