[Gdal-dev] GDAL and TIN formats update?

[Alexandre Leroux]

Thanks Frank for your answer.

A colleague made me stumble on this.
This is an interesting related file format,
http://local.wasp.uwa.edu.au/~pbourke/dataformats/ply/
"This document presents the PLY polygon file format, a format for 
storing graphical objects that are described as a collection of 
polygons. Our goal is to provide a format that is simple and easy to 
implement but that is general enough to be useful for a wide range of 
models. The file format has two sub-formats: an ASCII representation for 
easily getting started, and a binary version for compact storage and for 
rapid saving and loading. We hope that this format will promote the 
exchange of graphical object between programs and also between groups of 
people."

The interesting part as a TIN format is:
"The typical information in a PLY file contains just two elements, the 
(x,y,z) triples for vertices and the vertex indices for each face."

Regards,

Alex


Frank Warmerdam wrote:
> Alexandre Leroux wrote:
>>
>> Hi list,
>>
>> I've been looking for reading TIN data. In that case, it's from 
>> Bentley's Geopack. This is probably a proprietary format :-/
>>
>> When I searched for GDAL support of TIN formats, all I could find was 
>> this 2004 post to the list:
>> http://lists.maptools.org/pipermail/gdal-dev/2004-November/004552.html
>> has anything changed on this issue since then?
>>
>> I also asked the geowanking list and posted some related links to TIN 
>> data structures and my initial search over Slashgeo:
>> http://technology.slashgeo.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/25/1931255
>> this includes a link to code and algorith for TINs (of unknown quality).
> 
> Alex,
> 
> I noticed the discussion on Slashgeo and thought of contributing, but I
> didn't have too much to say.  There was a specific ASCII TIN format for
> Arc/Info 7.x but I don't know that it is significant anymore.  Shapefiles
> can be used for TINs, but OGR doesn't support the special types for that
> very well (if at all), though shapelib can access them.  I don't believe
> OGR supports any specific TIN formats.
> 
> Best regards,

-- 
Alexandre Leroux, M.Sc., Ing.
Environnement Canada / Environment Canada
Centre météorologique canadien / Canadian Meteorological Centre
Division de la réponse aux urgences environnementales /
Environmental Emergency Response Division
alexandre.leroux at ec.gc.ca