[pgpointcloud] Howto read/convert PTS or PTX formats?

[Martin Isenburg]

Hello,

adding PTX to PDAL would be the easiest. It is a pretty
straight-forward variation on an simple xyziRGB ASCII format with a
small header. What do you mean with laszip supporting pointcloud?

Martin

On Sat, Oct 12, 2013 at 9:13 AM, Stefan Keller <sfkeller at gmail.com> wrote:
>> What I'm still wishing is that laszip would support pointcloud - or that
>> PDAL would support .PTX...:-)
>
> ... in other words: What would be more straight forward to implement (for
> me/us)?
>
> -S.
>
>
> 2013/10/11 Stefan Keller <sfkeller at gmail.com>
>>
>> Hi Martin
>>
>> I did not realize that pointzip is based on laszip since pointzip mentions
>> only that it "(... uses the LASzip compression algorithm)".
>> And I did not find a documentation that mentions that laszip supports PTX.
>> I'm actually very comfortable with laszip being a command line tool.
>> What I'm still wishing is that laszip would support pointcloud - or thatt
>> PDAL would support .PTX...:-)
>>
>> Yours, Stefan
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> 2013/10/11 Martin Isenburg <martin.isenburg at gmail.com>
>>>
>>> Hello.
>>>
>>> you can use the pointzip.exe tool, but that is mainly meant to "take
>>> the edge off" as it has been my experience that the terrestrial
>>> scanner folks are very GUI centric and these folks seem reluctant to
>>> enter the command-line world.
>>>
>>> instead of using pointzip.exe through the GUI you can also use
>>>
>>> laszip -i in.pts -ipts -o out.laz
>>>
>>> or
>>>
>>> laszip -i in.ptx -iptx -o out.laz
>>>
>>> and the extra PTS or PTX information will be stored in an additional
>>> VLR record so it could be recovered if needed (for the PTX it is
>>> likely needed if there are any values in the translation or rotation
>>> matrices)
>>>
>>> Is pointzip.exe being used much in the terrestrial world? I got a lot
>>> of feedback after release but it has died down since.
>>>
>>> Martin
>>>
>>> PS: The web-site http://pointzip.org is really meant to house the
>>> "generic" compressor someday and I am still waiting vor Dave (USACE)
>>> or Paul (Elephant) to get back to me on that.
>>>
>>> On Fri, Oct 11, 2013 at 2:36 AM, Stefan Keller <sfkeller at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>> > Hi Howard (and hello to Mateusz too)
>>> >
>>> > Thanks for your replies. I'm new to converting LIDAR data (I'm rather
>>> > used
>>> > to vector and raster conversion) but I thought I'm not the first one to
>>> > process FARO Focus3d data.
>>> >
>>> > So my hope relies on a PTX->LAS conversion using Martin's pointzip
>>> > before
>>> > importing LAS->PostgreSQL/PostGIS/pointcloud).
>>> >
>>> > Or do you suggest to go back to the FARO device/software (which I don't
>>> > have
>>> > right now) and export to another format, which can be read then
>>> > directly
>>> > into PostgreSQL by PDAL (or another tool)?
>>> >
>>> > Yours, Stefan
>>> > (Maintainer of http://geoconverter.hsr.ch)
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > 2013/10/10 Howard Butler <howard at hobu.co>
>>> >>
>>> >>
>>> >> On Oct 9, 2013, at 5:22 PM, Stefan Keller <sfkeller at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> >>
>>> >> > Hi,
>>> >> >
>>> >> > I got data from a FARO Focus3d LIDAR scanner I think in PTS or PTX
>>> >> > format.
>>> >> > Does anybody have experiences in reading these formats - or at least
>>> >> > converting them to LAS?
>>> >> > I found pointzip [1] but I'd like to use PDAL since my target is
>>> >> > PostgreSQL (pointcloud extension) and PDAL supports writing to this
>>> >> > database.
>>> >> >
>>> >> > Yours, Stefan
>>> >> >
>>> >> > [1] http://www.cs.unc.edu/~isenburg/pointzip/
>>> >>
>>> >> PDAL doesn't support PTS or PTX at this time. The FARO folks would
>>> >> most
>>> >> likely need to provide either a binary API so that a PDAL driver could
>>> >> be
>>> >> written for their format(s), or alternatively, some sort of
>>> >> document(s)
>>> >> describing the binary layout of the formats so that a driver could be
>>> >> written.
>>> >>
>>> >> Sorry I can't be of more help.
>>> >>
>>> >> Howard
>>> >>
>>> >>
>>> >
>>
>>
>