Extract Geometry from Point Clouds (10:01 min)

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

Transcript

00:03

So for this session, we're going to look

00:05

at bringing a point cloud into Civil 3D

00:07

and utilizing that point cloud to create things like a surface

00:12

brake lines and points to be used with inside civil 3D.

00:18

So there's a couple of different methods for doing so.

00:21

You can create a 10 surface from your points

00:22

within the RCMP or RCMP format.

00:26

You can create a surface from several point clouds

00:29

you can select and define an area.

00:30

And you can filter out non ground points

00:32

to create that surface from you can also

00:35

start extracting geometry.

00:37

It's more of a manual process.

00:38

You can use feature extraction, you can use the Cogle points

00:43

and draw create your cargo points.

00:45

And you can draw and create feature lines 3D polish lines.

00:47

And so forth from that point club.

00:50

So let's move over to several 3D.

00:52

And look how easy it is to work with point clouds

00:54

within Autodesk civil 3D.

00:57

So we have our point cloud within civil 3D.

00:60

We first inserted it from the Insert tab point cloud

01:03

panel and the attach and we want to first create a surface

01:07

from this point cloud.

01:08

So I'm going to select my point cloud if your point

01:12

cloud is clarified You can turn on and off the classification.

01:17

So if we can look at this point cloud.

01:18

You can see that it is clarified We

01:20

have our ground shots our non ground shots some vegetation

01:23

removed.

01:25

We can use the color mapping option

01:27

to take off or turn off some of these things.

01:30

So if I want to get rid of low vegetation buildings

01:34

and a few of these points here.

01:36

I can simply turn them off and select OK.

01:40

That way, when I create my surface that point cloud

01:43

does not have some of those points.

01:45

I don't want in that surface.

01:49

So with that point cloud selected.

01:51

I'm then going to go to the ribbon

01:52

and from the civil 3D panel to create surface

01:56

from point cloud.

01:59

We're going to name this.

02:00

I'm going to call it existing ground

02:06

our style we're going to use a contours style of one

02:10

in five background.

02:11

So an existing ground contour style.

02:14

I'm a select next point cloud selection,

02:19

we can create a surface from our entire point cloud

02:21

or multiple point clouds.

02:23

But as you can see, this point cloud

02:25

has millions and millions of points.

02:31

And this one almost

02:35

So what we're going to do.

02:36

I'm going to select here in the selected area

02:38

and choose point cloud.

02:39

I'm going to remove this because we're

02:41

going to define a new area.

02:43

So I'm going to remove that from the selection list.

02:45

And I'm going to define an area that we're going

02:47

to create our surface from.

02:54

And we want to use that kind of the focal area of our project

02:57

here.

02:57

And I'm just going to polygon an area.

03:07

It's going to window that area.

03:08

It's going to bring up that same dialog box to show us

03:11

how many points are now and that selected area.

03:16

So as you can see, we've selected an area

03:18

with much less amount of points.

03:21

Still a lot of points to bring in a civil 3D.

03:23

So we're going to do a little bit of filtering right now

03:26

the distance between points is about hundreds of a foot.

03:30

I'm going to change that.

03:31

And I just want to do a grid of maybe 2 and 1/2 feet

03:36

and you can see that our points drastically

03:39

went down to 653,000 points you can do a different number here.

03:46

So maybe I'm going to go five points.

03:49

And again, our points are a lot less a lot easier

03:54

to manage inside civil 3D.

03:55

So we're going to go with that one.

03:58

We've defined a new area for the points to be from.

04:02

And we have changed the distance between 0.2.

04:05

I'm going to select next.

04:07

Now, there's three methods to filter this

04:09

out these non ground points.

04:12

We've got the planar average creaking interpolate relation

04:16

and we have no filter as select here the cricketing option.

04:21

And you can kind of see that it kind of gives you

04:23

a display of what may happen inside your surface.

04:27

No filters is going to take all the points

04:29

that you have they're filtered out to that five foot grid.

04:33

And in this case, we want to use no filter

04:35

we've got to have a classified point cloud we've

04:38

removed all the vegetation and some

04:40

of the buildings and other items.

04:42

So we want to go no filter and simply select create surface.

04:49

It's to process in the background going

04:51

to hit close you can continue to work while that processes.

04:56

So depending on the size of your surface.

04:57

This may take a few moments this may be pretty automatic Yeah,

05:01

you can see here, the bottom rises surface

05:03

created click here to zoom to I'm going to unload my point

05:07

cloud just to show the surface.

05:09

So I mean go to my ex refs right click

05:11

and unload and let's look at a top you and do it zoom

05:22

extends for our surface.

05:24

You can see that quickly we brought it in that point cloud,

05:27

we removed a lot of the non ground shots.

05:29

And we created the surface that's

05:32

one way of working with the point clouds

05:33

if we want to extract some feature lines

05:36

or draw some points in there.

05:37

There's a couple other options that we can do.

05:39

So let's look at those options.

05:46

I'm going to reload my point cloud my turn

05:51

my surface to a no display style.

05:53

So we can have a little bit more room to work here.

06:08

OK, let's look at a different view.

06:11

I might turn my point cloud back to the point cloud colors.

06:17

So the scan colors that way we can kind of see

06:20

what we're working with here.

06:21

And I'm just going to crop out a small portion of this point

06:24

cloud.

06:26

So with that point cloud selected, go rectangular crop

06:36

and maybe we want to focus on this intersection

06:43

or rotate that something to see this in a 3D view.

06:50

You can see this works really well in Civil 3D.

06:54

Now we can draw feature lines or our brake lines.

06:57

So I'm just going to draw a line here

06:59

along the edge of pavement.

07:01

Someone move that back to a top view.

07:03

Let's zoom in here to our edge payment multiple options or we

07:07

could do 2D poly line.

07:10

We could do a 3D poly line.

07:12

We could do a feature line first thing I want to check

07:14

is my oh snap.

07:15

So down here in the bottom.

07:17

I mean choose my oh snap settings.

07:20

And in those settings there's a 3D object.

07:22

Step you want to make sure that

07:26

And then you can select here when

07:28

the point cloud different options to snap

07:31

to within that point cloud.

07:33

Most common.

07:33

I'm going to do is just use the node.

07:35

So as long as notice selected, I'll be able to select

07:38

and snap to xyz of this point cloud head.

07:43

OK, here.

07:44

Next step, I'm going to go to my Home tab feature line,

07:47

create feature line.

07:50

We're going to put this on the feature line state.

07:53

We're going to put this style we're

07:54

going to use the basic feature line style on the display tab,

07:59

I may want to see this show up a little bit better.

08:02

So let's turn that yellow so that we can see that.

08:05

And maybe we do a line wait just a little bit larger.

08:08

So this will display a little bit better for us.

08:20

OK So now I'm in the feature line command.

08:22

You can see that blue glyph that's popping up everywhere.

08:26

I'm going that is picking a point within that point cloud.

08:29

So everywhere that blue is at snapping

08:32

to the node of an elevation y, and z of that point cloud.

08:38

So I can simply come in here and I

08:39

can find the edge of the pavement

08:41

or just go here says specify elevation.

08:46

So you can see here.

08:46

It's picking up the elevation that point cloud.

08:48

I'm just going to hit Enter.

08:50

So somewhat of a manual process.

08:52

I can walk down that road keep selecting the elevation hitting

08:56

enter enter enter.

09:02

And so forth.

09:08

Let's turn the plan you to something

09:10

a little bit different.

09:11

So you can see the.

09:15

So that point cloud, and that feature line if I rotate this

09:19

to a different view, you can see it is now

09:21

draped on that point cloud.

09:24

So I can quickly and easily draw those feature lines in there

09:27

as brake lines.

09:28

Add those to the surface.

09:30

I can extract objects like my paint lines

09:33

my curb and gutter anything that I want to draw

09:36

and from that point cloud.

09:38

I can utilize civil

09:40

a feature line through the line or 2D poly line

09:43

to start extracting objects from that point cloud.

09:46

So we did our surface.

09:47

And we did our feature line.

09:49

We could do points as well.

09:51

Anything in there.

09:51

So that point cloud is so robust.

09:53

So rich with data, we can start extracting how much information

09:56

we want from that point cloud.

Video transcript

00:03

So for this session, we're going to look

00:05

at bringing a point cloud into Civil 3D

00:07

and utilizing that point cloud to create things like a surface

00:12

brake lines and points to be used with inside civil 3D.

00:18

So there's a couple of different methods for doing so.

00:21

You can create a 10 surface from your points

00:22

within the RCMP or RCMP format.

00:26

You can create a surface from several point clouds

00:29

you can select and define an area.

00:30

And you can filter out non ground points

00:32

to create that surface from you can also

00:35

start extracting geometry.

00:37

It's more of a manual process.

00:38

You can use feature extraction, you can use the Cogle points

00:43

and draw create your cargo points.

00:45

And you can draw and create feature lines 3D polish lines.

00:47

And so forth from that point club.

00:50

So let's move over to several 3D.

00:52

And look how easy it is to work with point clouds

00:54

within Autodesk civil 3D.

00:57

So we have our point cloud within civil 3D.

00:60

We first inserted it from the Insert tab point cloud

01:03

panel and the attach and we want to first create a surface

01:07

from this point cloud.

01:08

So I'm going to select my point cloud if your point

01:12

cloud is clarified You can turn on and off the classification.

01:17

So if we can look at this point cloud.

01:18

You can see that it is clarified We

01:20

have our ground shots our non ground shots some vegetation

01:23

removed.

01:25

We can use the color mapping option

01:27

to take off or turn off some of these things.

01:30

So if I want to get rid of low vegetation buildings

01:34

and a few of these points here.

01:36

I can simply turn them off and select OK.

01:40

That way, when I create my surface that point cloud

01:43

does not have some of those points.

01:45

I don't want in that surface.

01:49

So with that point cloud selected.

01:51

I'm then going to go to the ribbon

01:52

and from the civil 3D panel to create surface

01:56

from point cloud.

01:59

We're going to name this.

02:00

I'm going to call it existing ground

02:06

our style we're going to use a contours style of one

02:10

in five background.

02:11

So an existing ground contour style.

02:14

I'm a select next point cloud selection,

02:19

we can create a surface from our entire point cloud

02:21

or multiple point clouds.

02:23

But as you can see, this point cloud

02:25

has millions and millions of points.

02:31

And this one almost

02:35

So what we're going to do.

02:36

I'm going to select here in the selected area

02:38

and choose point cloud.

02:39

I'm going to remove this because we're

02:41

going to define a new area.

02:43

So I'm going to remove that from the selection list.

02:45

And I'm going to define an area that we're going

02:47

to create our surface from.

02:54

And we want to use that kind of the focal area of our project

02:57

here.

02:57

And I'm just going to polygon an area.

03:07

It's going to window that area.

03:08

It's going to bring up that same dialog box to show us

03:11

how many points are now and that selected area.

03:16

So as you can see, we've selected an area

03:18

with much less amount of points.

03:21

Still a lot of points to bring in a civil 3D.

03:23

So we're going to do a little bit of filtering right now

03:26

the distance between points is about hundreds of a foot.

03:30

I'm going to change that.

03:31

And I just want to do a grid of maybe 2 and 1/2 feet

03:36

and you can see that our points drastically

03:39

went down to 653,000 points you can do a different number here.

03:46

So maybe I'm going to go five points.

03:49

And again, our points are a lot less a lot easier

03:54

to manage inside civil 3D.

03:55

So we're going to go with that one.

03:58

We've defined a new area for the points to be from.

04:02

And we have changed the distance between 0.2.

04:05

I'm going to select next.

04:07

Now, there's three methods to filter this

04:09

out these non ground points.

04:12

We've got the planar average creaking interpolate relation

04:16

and we have no filter as select here the cricketing option.

04:21

And you can kind of see that it kind of gives you

04:23

a display of what may happen inside your surface.

04:27

No filters is going to take all the points

04:29

that you have they're filtered out to that five foot grid.

04:33

And in this case, we want to use no filter

04:35

we've got to have a classified point cloud we've

04:38

removed all the vegetation and some

04:40

of the buildings and other items.

04:42

So we want to go no filter and simply select create surface.

04:49

It's to process in the background going

04:51

to hit close you can continue to work while that processes.

04:56

So depending on the size of your surface.

04:57

This may take a few moments this may be pretty automatic Yeah,

05:01

you can see here, the bottom rises surface

05:03

created click here to zoom to I'm going to unload my point

05:07

cloud just to show the surface.

05:09

So I mean go to my ex refs right click

05:11

and unload and let's look at a top you and do it zoom

05:22

extends for our surface.

05:24

You can see that quickly we brought it in that point cloud,

05:27

we removed a lot of the non ground shots.

05:29

And we created the surface that's

05:32

one way of working with the point clouds

05:33

if we want to extract some feature lines

05:36

or draw some points in there.

05:37

There's a couple other options that we can do.

05:39

So let's look at those options.

05:46

I'm going to reload my point cloud my turn

05:51

my surface to a no display style.

05:53

So we can have a little bit more room to work here.

06:08

OK, let's look at a different view.

06:11

I might turn my point cloud back to the point cloud colors.

06:17

So the scan colors that way we can kind of see

06:20

what we're working with here.

06:21

And I'm just going to crop out a small portion of this point

06:24

cloud.

06:26

So with that point cloud selected, go rectangular crop

06:36

and maybe we want to focus on this intersection

06:43

or rotate that something to see this in a 3D view.

06:50

You can see this works really well in Civil 3D.

06:54

Now we can draw feature lines or our brake lines.

06:57

So I'm just going to draw a line here

06:59

along the edge of pavement.

07:01

Someone move that back to a top view.

07:03

Let's zoom in here to our edge payment multiple options or we

07:07

could do 2D poly line.

07:10

We could do a 3D poly line.

07:12

We could do a feature line first thing I want to check

07:14

is my oh snap.

07:15

So down here in the bottom.

07:17

I mean choose my oh snap settings.

07:20

And in those settings there's a 3D object.

07:22

Step you want to make sure that

07:26

And then you can select here when

07:28

the point cloud different options to snap

07:31

to within that point cloud.

07:33

Most common.

07:33

I'm going to do is just use the node.

07:35

So as long as notice selected, I'll be able to select

07:38

and snap to xyz of this point cloud head.

07:43

OK, here.

07:44

Next step, I'm going to go to my Home tab feature line,

07:47

create feature line.

07:50

We're going to put this on the feature line state.

07:53

We're going to put this style we're

07:54

going to use the basic feature line style on the display tab,

07:59

I may want to see this show up a little bit better.

08:02

So let's turn that yellow so that we can see that.

08:05

And maybe we do a line wait just a little bit larger.

08:08

So this will display a little bit better for us.

08:20

OK So now I'm in the feature line command.

08:22

You can see that blue glyph that's popping up everywhere.

08:26

I'm going that is picking a point within that point cloud.

08:29

So everywhere that blue is at snapping

08:32

to the node of an elevation y, and z of that point cloud.

08:38

So I can simply come in here and I

08:39

can find the edge of the pavement

08:41

or just go here says specify elevation.

08:46

So you can see here.

08:46

It's picking up the elevation that point cloud.

08:48

I'm just going to hit Enter.

08:50

So somewhat of a manual process.

08:52

I can walk down that road keep selecting the elevation hitting

08:56

enter enter enter.

09:02

And so forth.

09:08

Let's turn the plan you to something

09:10

a little bit different.

09:11

So you can see the.

09:15

So that point cloud, and that feature line if I rotate this

09:19

to a different view, you can see it is now

09:21

draped on that point cloud.

09:24

So I can quickly and easily draw those feature lines in there

09:27

as brake lines.

09:28

Add those to the surface.

09:30

I can extract objects like my paint lines

09:33

my curb and gutter anything that I want to draw

09:36

and from that point cloud.

09:38

I can utilize civil

09:40

a feature line through the line or 2D poly line

09:43

to start extracting objects from that point cloud.

09:46

So we did our surface.

09:47

And we did our feature line.

09:49

We could do points as well.

09:51

Anything in there.

09:51

So that point cloud is so robust.

09:53

So rich with data, we can start extracting how much information

09:56

we want from that point cloud.

In this session, we’re going to review bringing point cloud into Civil 3D and utilizing it to create things like surfaces, breaklines and points. There are a few methods to do this:

Create a TIN surface from points within RCS format point cloud scan files and RCP format point cloud project files created with Autodesk ReCap.

o Create a surface from several point clouds.

o Create a surface from defined/selected area

o Filter non-ground points

Create 2D & 3D Geometry from point clouds.

o Use automagte3d feature extraction tool

o Draw/create COGO points

o Draw/create feature lines or 3D polylines

Task: Convert Point Clouds into Geometry

We begin with a point cloud in Civil 3D. We want to create a surface from this point cloud, so select the point cloud.
If your point cloud is classified, you can turn the “Classification” tool on and off to check it out.
Use the “Color Mapping” option to edit the classifications to make creating your surface more specific.
With the point cloud selected, select “Create Surface from Point Cloud” from the “Civil 3D” panel at the top of the screen.
window titled “Create TIN Surface from Point Cloud – General” will appear. Name the surface and select a style. For this example, we are using the “Contours 1’ and 5’ (Background)” style.
Select “Next”.
We can create a surface from our entire point cloud or multiple point clouds, but the point cloud in our example has millions of points. So, we’re going to define a new area by selecting the point cloud in the list and clicking “Remove a selection from the list”.
Then select “Add a selected area of a point cloud” and window a polygon-shaped area.
The “Create TIN Surface from Point Cloud’ window will appear again and show you the number of points selected. Although we have less points now, we still have more than we want to take into Civil 3D, so we’re going to do some filtering.
First, change the distance between points to about “5”. You’ll notice immediately that the number of points will do down.
Select “Next” and choose a filter. The box on the right will give you a display of what may happen on your surface. For our example, we will select “No filter” because we already have a classified point cloud that we’ve removed the vegetation and some of the buildings from.
Click “Create Surface” and then select “Close” in the processing window. While that processes, we can continue to work.
Next, we want to just see the surface, so unload the point cloud by selecting “External References” from the right side of the screen and right-clicking on “Redtail” and selecting “Unload”.
Select the surface and view is as a “Top” view with a “2D Wireframe” and do a zoom extense.
To draw a feature line in your surface, reload the point cloud, turn the surface to a “No Display” style and return the colors of the surface to “Scan Colors”.
Next, crop out a section of the point cloud. In our example, we’ll focus on an intersection.
From here, you can add a feature line, a 2D polyine or a 3D polyine. In this example, we’re going to add a feature line to an edge of pavement. First, make sure the 3D snap is on by selecting the “Object Snap Settings” at the bottom of the screen.
In the window that appears, select the “3D Object Snap” tab and check the box for “3D Object Snap On”. And select “Node” from the “Point Cloud” list and hit “OK”.
Then go to the “Home” tab and select “Feature Line” from the ribbon and then “Create Feature Line”.
In the “Create Feature Lines” window that appears, select “Feature Lines” as the “Site” and “Basic Feature Line” as the “Style”.
We’re also going to edit the style further by clicking on the edit button next to the “Style” drop-down menu.
In the window that appears, select the “Display” tab and choose “Model” in the “View Direction” drop-down menu. Change the color and lineweight to something more visible. For our example, we’re choosing the color yellow and a lineweight of “0.50 mm”.
Select “OK”.
In the feature line command, you’ll see a blue “x” within a circle where your cursor is going. This blue marker shows up when it’s snapping to a node in the point cloud.
Now we’ll find an edge of pavement and click on the point where we want to start. The command bar will ask to specify the elevation, just hit “Enter”. Continue this click-and-enter process to build your line.
Now, you can see this feature line draped on the opint cloud and add them to a surface as well as extract objects like paint lines and curbs and gutters.

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Extract Geometry from Point Clouds (10:01 min)

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