Today's drone technology makes it easy to collect existing site conditions as a point cloud. Once captured, point clouds provide a wealth of analytic opportunities. In this week’s installment, we'll use Civil 3D to analyze a point cloud and extract the volume of a large stockpile.
If your projects require you to calculate stockpile volumes, try experimenting with a point cloud workflow. Capturing stockpiles as point clouds can be the fastest and safest means of collecting this data, while also providing more detail than what is obtainable using more traditional collection methods.
If you are interested, I’ve created a quick video below to help you get started…
For this week's video, I thought I would stay with the same theme and utilize some survey monument GIS data inside Autodesk Infraworks. I show some tips for moving attributes from the SHP file to the Infraworks database. I also show using some of these attributes as tooltips.
Using the “Point Cloud Terrain” feature, InfraWorks makes it easy to extract a bare earth surface from a point cloud. Extracted surfaces are a perfect way to add detail to an existing conditions model. InfraWorks then makes it easy to share these surfaces with other Autodesk applications, providing countless opportunities to analyze, visualize, and sample the data.
In this week’s installment, we’ll explore a workflow to migrate an existing ground surface (built from aerial imagery) from InfraWorks to Civil 3D. If you are interested, I’ve created a quick recording below that walks through everything…
As many of you know, the Map 3D FDO tools for connecting to various GIS databases and file stores are very powerful and luckily-are included with Civil 3D. Recently, I was talking with a customer about grabbing published survey monument data and bringing it into a Civil 3D project. Based on this discussion, I thought this might be of interest to others who may not be completely familiar with the GIS tools available in Civil 3D/Map 3D; hence this post.
When using ReCap Photo to process drone imagery, you have the option of creating a 3D point cloud. This point cloud can serve many purposes! When added to an InfraWorks model for example, the cloud can be used to improve the accuracy of the existing ground surface.
In this week’s installment, we’ll look at how to import a point cloud from ReCap Photo into InfraWorks. We will then use the “Point Cloud Terrain” feature to extract a bare earth surface that will provide additional detail and accuracy to a site model. If you are interested, I've created a quick video that walks through a possible workflow...
NOTE: Point clouds created from imagery will produce surface elevations matching a site’s vegetation: grass, brush, crops, etc. (Basically, the surface represents what the camera “sees”.) Point clouds created from Lidar however, will provide the most accurate bare earth extraction as the laser used to collect the data is capable of penetrating vegetation.
Using today’s drone technology, it’s easier than ever to obtain current, high quality aerial imagery for most any project site. The ease in which these images are created also means they can be “swapped out” frequently (even daily) as site conditions change!
In our last session we looked at how ReCap Photo can be used to convert a collection of drone images into a high resolution orthographic aerial image. In this week’s installment, we’ll look at how that orthographic image can be incorporated into an InfraWorks model. If you are interested, I’ve created a video below that walks through the workflow...
-Jeff
Note: If you would like to review the ReCap Photo workflow used to create the image used in this example, please follow the link below… https://youtu.be/W560LxggqeM
Specifically, transferring an ASCII point file from one "Point file" format to another. In other words, I have an ASCII file containing survey points that are formatted as PNEZD (comma delimited) and I need them in a PENZ (space delimited) file format.
In the past, I would have accomplished this by importing the points into Civil 3D using the first point file format and then immediately turn around and export them into the second point file format.
The problem with this is, it is an entirely manual process that involves several steps. If only there were a better way. Fortunately, there is!!
Using the TransferPoints tool in Civil 3D, we can transfer an ASCII point file from one file format directly into another in a single step.
I'd like to start by saying thanks for the video requests! Keep them coming!
Today's request was to show a technique for bringing in local survey data into the Survey Database (SDB) that has established control points; except this time, the local survey data is in static/fixed format. As always, many ways to attack this. In my example, we use the standard cogo tools to translate the data into coordinate space; then export a clean file out that can be used in the SDB.
Check out the video below to see this workflow in action.
It’s surprising how easy it is to create a 3D mesh from drone captured imagery using ReCap Photo. In the event your aerial images contain GPS metadata (Latitude, Longitude, Altitude) ReCap photo can leverage this information to scale and geospatially locate the mesh. If higher accuracy is required, ReCap photo allows you to assign Ground Control Points such that the resulting 3D mesh is aligned to surveyed coordinates.
Whenever ReCap Photo processes a mesh, it can also generate a point cloud and/or ortho TIF if desired. These assets can then be easily incorporated into a Civil 3D or InfraWorks model. In this week’s installment we’ll use ReCap Photo to create an accurate 3D mesh that leverages surveyed ground control points. If you are interested, I’ve created a quick video that walks through the workflow…
After my "RW5 Import" post a few weeks ago, I had a request to show bringing a local survey file into a coordinate space already defined by fixed control points in the Survey Database. The best technique can vary depending on how the data was collected, but I hope this video gets the general point across.
Check out the video below to see this workflow in action.
