[pdal] PDAL .NET support

[Howard Butler]

On May 5, 2013, at 12:25 PM, Dave Borel <dborel at zspace.com> wrote:

> Hi Howard,
> I'm writing a point cloud importer for a Unity application. Unity effectively uses .NET 3.5 via Mono. I'm considering using PDAL, but I have some questions about its roadmap. I came across this thread on StackExchange, where you recommended using laspy instead of PDAL's C# SWIG binding (or libLas's). Is PDAL's C# binding safe to use? I managed to build it from the latest copy of master, but I had to make several changes. Would you be interested in a patch? I was also wondering if PDAL is still under active development. Will more format drivers (such as PCD, PLY, or XYZ) be added in the future?
> Thanks,

I don't know much about the C# bindings. I would assume they're as safe as anything else in PDAL at this point. PDAL isn't bulletproof for sure, but it is starting to become quite useful now. As they say, expect to bleed if you're on the bleeding edge...

There's a PCD writer, but no reader. Same for XYZ. I've been working on the XYZ ingester at a few different times, but haven't pushed anything solid yet. Short answer is yes, more stuff is coming, but long answer is I don't know when. Always looking for more contribution..

Absolutely drop pull requests on your changes. Please break them up into separate items if possible. I did a bunch of work a few weeks ago to get things to build on windows, so make sure you're merged with the latest.

Thanks,

Howard