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A Whole New "Field to Finish" Using LiDAR Point Clouds

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Description

We have all probably seen the "Field to Finish" workflows over the past few years. But how do we work LiDAR (light detection and ranging) point clouds from ReCap software into the mix? Come see how we easily create all our features, survey figures, survey points, and topo surfaces directly from our scan data. From simple topo surveys to ALTA surveys and more, this class will help you use that massive amount of data with ease. We will use a bridge scan as the example and take this thing from "Field to Finish" in a whole new way. So if you want to spend less time in the field and more time doing desktop survey, this class is for you.

Key Learnings

  • Learn about register scans in ReCap
  • Learn how to set up AutoCAD Civil 3D for Automated Linework
  • Learn how to import ReCap point cloud (with Regions)
  • Learn how to create points, surfaces, and figures

Speaker

  • Avatar for Shawn Herring
    Shawn Herring
    As an accomplished consultant for over 15+ years, Shawn Herring is a well-known figure in the design community. Shawn has many titles, Consulting & Services Manager for ProSoft, Owner of Region Engineering & Surveying and Co-Founder of RealityOne which specializes in LiDar and drone reality capture. Over the past decade Shawn has been involved in hundreds of projects across the country. During his vast career, Shawn has trained thousands of CADD users, helped hundreds of civil infrastructure companies and major Departments of Transportations implement new technologies, standardize workflows and enhance productivity. Shawn is a contributor/author for several local, national and international publications. His forward thinking and professional insights have been published in UC&D magazine, Informed Infrastructure and AUGI magazine to name a few.
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Transcript

SHAWN HERRING: My name's Shawn Herring. I'm with ProSoft. We're out of Utah. I'm a training/ consulting manager and handle the infrastructure side of things.

I was telling these guys this is the third year out of six they've given me the 8 o'clock class the night after the beer bash. So they either don't like me or hope I can keep you guys awake. Thanks for actually showing up, though. I thought half would be asleep still.

What we're going to talk about today-- I'm not a big PowerPoint person, so I'm going to cruise through this PowerPoint, and then we're going to get into it here. You saw the class handout-- that was probably two weeks late, sorry. Now we're going to go over some LiDar scanning stuff, so we're going to go over ReCap.

The project we're going to use, it's just a road corridor in downtown Billings, Montana, that was scanned. So we're going to import and register our LiDAR data using ReCap. We're going to set up Civil 3D for the "Field to Finish"-- the automated line work, and so forth. We're going to bring in our ReCap file into Civil, and then we're going to create some points and so forth.

So who here uses the "Field to Finish," or the automated line work in Civil 3D? So quite a few of you. I still see a lot that don't. We're kind of basing this on a LiDar scan, but this could be used whether you're scanning or you're just topo-ing out in the field. Same concepts apply when we get into the Civil 3D side of it. We're just going to use that scan to create some points from.

So just a quick overview. The ReCap workflow-- we're going to import. We're going to register. We're going to clean it up. We're going to export it. So the "Field to Finish"-- there's some Figure Prefix Database, Linework Code Set that we're going to set up.

A couple things we may look at there. We're going to import our ReCap file, and then we're going to do some little desktop surveying and create some points. If you have any questions as we go throughout-- I don't care if you wait till the end. Just raise your hand or something, or just yell it out. And we'll answer questions as we go. Whatever you guys need, just feel free.

A little bit about ReCap. Like I said, I'm going to cruise through this PowerPoint and just get right into the software. You know, there's three versions of ReCap today. That's probably going to change tomorrow. You never know. You've got ReCap, you've got ReCap 360, and you've got ReCap 360 Ultimate.

And so what I'm going to be using today is ReCap 360 Ultimate. And really the big thing with the ultimate-- the difference in the three-- is more the registration. So there's some automatic registration tools. There's some point-to-point registration, cloud-to-could, all that, as well as survey control of verification.

So there's a few other little things that are different in ReCap 360 Ultimate, which I'm just going to call ReCap, but those are kind of the big ones. So registration and survey-- that's why we're going to use the Ultimate stuff today, for those tools.

The Simple Workflow-- so we're just going to drag and drop some scans. I'll show you-- depending on the type of scanner, you can pretty much bring anything into ReCap. I'm using FARO scans, so the raw file is from FARO to FLS files.

Simple Workflow-- we're going to drag and drop them in, let them import. We're going to register by picking a few points. We're going to use automatic registration using a few different things. I'll just kind of show you some of the tools in there.

You can see here the formats on the left. And there may be a few more in there, but those are the file types that can be imported. So most scanners and most file types-- I can't think of one that's not supported anymore-- those are going to be able to be imported. And then you can export them out to a few different formats as well.

We're going to set up the databases, like I said. So the line work code set-- very simple. There's really nothing to it. Figure Prefix Database-- again, pretty simple. We'll keep it simple for today as well.

And then we're going to do some editing of that point cloud. We're going to use some of the snaps that-- kind of hidden there-- there are just four point clouds to create our points, and then we're going to manually create a bunch of points in this scan. And then run that through "Field to Finish."

So that's kind of the gist of the next 60 to 90 minutes, wherever we end up on that. Any questions before we jump into it?

AUDIENCE: You said it can import so many file types-- any raw file types or registered file types?

SHAWN HERRING: Any raw file type.

AUDIENCE: So you can take [INAUDIBLE]

SHAWN HERRING: Yeah, I think that's a new-- I know initially it wasn't supported, but I believe it's supported now. Correct me if I'm wrong, anyone, but I'm pretty sure that the raw files now from Leica can be imported then.

AUDIENCE: Because you couldn't before.

SHAWN HERRING: Yeah. Yeah. I think that was the one that was always the hang-up. I'm pretty sure it can. It's something I can double check for you. So I'm going to take a seat here. I'm going to launch ReCap. Let's get rid of this PowerPoint.

Probably the simplest user interface, for those that-- who has used ReCap, the registration and all that, the Ultimate? OK. Good. Pretty straightforward, pretty simple. So we're going to create a new project. So up here in the top left hand, I'm going to go to New Project. You can't see that?

AUDIENCE: Nope.

SHAWN HERRING: That's awesome. Just trust me it works. Are we good now? OK. So I'm going to go ahead and create a new project. It's going to prompt you with this, so where do you want to save it? Here in the bottom-- I'm just going to leave it on my default. Save location-- file name. I'm just going to call it BillingsAU.

When you create a project-- so once you hit Proceed, let me look at the file folder and show you what it creates. When you create a project, it's going to create two files. It's going to create the ReCap project file, and it's going to create the support file.

So don't delete either one of those. You'll need them both. The support file is basically going to make a copy of your raw scans and stuff, converted into that support file. So make sure you have plenty of file space. It'll add up.

So a couple ways to import them. We've got a folder-- that's better. Select files to import, we could go individually. Select the folder, we can point it to a folder and it's going to bring in everything from the folder.

Easier way, I think, is just to come into your scan location. We're just going to drag them over and drop them on the target. It's going to go through the initial import process. I'm not going to sit here and let all those-- that' be a boring class if we just let these import for 25 minutes. But you can see the progress of this first one going, so I'll let this first one go.

So the initial import-- we can begin to register, once a couple of them maybe are imported. I usually choose to allow it to finish before registering. It's going to finish eventually anyway. So once these first ones go, I'll show you. It should go pretty quick.

AUDIENCE: So what's it doing?

SHAWN HERRING: So it's just importing and converting the raw scan data. So if I go back-- let's see if it's started here. So it's starting to bring those in. It always go slower when you're live and not watching football. But yeah, it's just converting those to the RCC file-- the ReCap file. It should go quicker.

I'll show you what it does. We're going to crash this purposely, because I have a baking show ready to go. OK. So once those import-- now let me open up the imported one-- once they're imported, you'll see them change to color or black and white. So if we didn't take pictures or add the color in there, you'll see them a little bit different. This is what they'll look like once they're imported.

So we'll go through, and then the next step is to register. So the import-- very drag and drop, and you're done with step one, the import process. So the next step would be the registration. So down here we've got a couple different options for registration.

You've got the Skip Registration. What that would be more for if you have, let's say, a large LAS file or DEN, or something that's already been registered, and you want to use the ReCap engine, which I would highly suggest bringing it to ReCap before you bring it to Civil 3D. Import that LAS file, skip the registration, save it, and you're done. So that's kind of what the skip is for. That's more if it's already been registered, or you have something that's just a large point cloud that doesn't need registration.

A little bit about ReCap, since I kind of mentioned LAS-- I think AutoCAD itself, if you bring an LAS file in, you're 2 billion points, or something like that. If you run it through the ReCap engine, you're 20 billion plus. Something that would take-- you guys have probably tried to import a large LAS file in the Civil 3D, right? And if it worked, it took a while.

If you take that same LAS file, import it to ReCap, save it, and bring it in to Civil 3D, it's in in a matter of seconds. So if you just use ReCap to save some of those files to run it through the different engine, that'll save tons of time. So something to think about there.

Manual registration-- we're going to do a little bit of the manual registration. That's where we'd go in and pick the points and stitch it together ourselves. Now in the latest versions-- and this was a few months ago, I think-- you've got register scans, which is the automatic registration, and we're going to use that first. We're going to have it do kind of a cloud-to-cloud registration for us. It doesn't always do 100% of them, and so then you'll have some manual work to do. But it gets you a good start.

So I'm going to select that-- register scans. And so this one, there's 13 scans in here. This will probably just take a minute, not long at all. But it's going through and it's trying to match them up. It's creating scan groups. So we can see here at the top, we've got the scan groups. And this one, I think we'll end up with three groups.

AUDIENCE: You mention the point [INAUDIBLE]

SHAWN HERRING: I don't before. Yeah, usually on the back side of it, before I export to an RCS, we mess with that.

AUDIENCE: They're not RCS files yet?

SHAWN HERRING: These ones are-- no, they're not RCA files yet.

AUDIENCE: If we're going to make RCS files, we're [INAUDIBLE]

SHAWN HERRING: We're going to export our RCPs to an RCS. So right now they're RCC.

AUDIENCE: No, I think it's the other way.

SHAWN HERRING: Maybe it's the other way. That's possible.

AUDIENCE: I got confused by it, because it's so similar-sounding. One references the other, though.

SHAWN HERRING: Let me pull up this file, support file. Yeah, so it creates the RCCs when you import, and then you export to RCS, which is a combined indexed point cloud file.

AUDIENCE: Thank you.

SHAWN HERRING: We'll go over that a little bit more when I export it out there. But yeah, you got RCP, RCC, RCS. We'll try to clear it up a little bit today, with some of this stuff. So that went-- well, that didn't take too long, right? So that did kind of the auto registration.

This says here of the 13 scans, we've got three groups created. One scan remaining, which means it couldn't take that scan and register it with anything. So there's kind of just a rogue scan out there that we've got to manually register. So again, it saved us a little bit of time.

Going to hit OK here. You can look at the different groups. So you always have one group on the left. If I hover over that, I can jump from group to group. You've got a group on the right. The one with the question mark is all the unregistered groups, so let me switch over to that. So this is one, and we'll register this one here shortly.

So I've got group two, group three, some of those. It's always running in auto registration, so once I switch to this-- it says Billings08 up there-- it's looking for points in common. Don't get too excited about that. It works. But like you can see here, it would stitch it together if I said merge scans, and this one is like a mile apart.

Sometimes this can throw you off, but if you hover over this, you're going to get a quick preview and know that that's probably not correct there. But depending on your scan, everything as we go through, you'll see this turn green, you'll see a red, you'll see it just be good to go sometimes. We can jump around from scan to scan within these groups.

So if I go scan one-- I'm at my different scan location-- I can use this here. I can pick it from the top down view. I can do a 3D preview. So if I want a quick 3D preview of this one group, I can hit 3D preview. We'll give it a second.

And then I can see that initial scan or two, or whatever is in that group. You can turn one off, you can turn them all off, all on. But it just gives you a good, quick inspection of that thing. I'm going to hit OK here.

So I'm going to jump over to scan number one, and we're going to register this with scan number two. So I'm going to pick-- let's find what group that is. So this group's got scan two through seven on it. It says it thinks there's a match. You can come in here and look.

And this one looks close, but I know it's not correct, so we're going to register manually these two groups together by picking a few points. So I'm going to zoom around here. You've got to pick three points on the left, three points on the right, in whatever order. You can do all three on the left, you can go one, one.

So I'm going to come, and I'm going to choose-- no targets here, so I don't have any targets, right? So we're just going to use features-- buildings, the road, whatever it is, for our targets. So I'm going to start picking a couple points here. So I'm going to pick the zero, kind of right in the middle. I'm going to zoom in here and pick that same point. Let's find a couple other.

AUDIENCE: Is that a target on the boulder? Yeah, this one is a sphere target. I don't use those anymore, but you can still use targets. You can see here on the bottom where I can identify the checkerboard target, or identify one of the spherical targets.

AUDIENCE: You just use the [INAUDIBLE] ones?

SHAWN HERRING: What's that?

AUDIENCE: You just don't need those any more?

SHAWN HERRING: In ReCap, it's targetless registration. So depending on the project, I still use checkerboard targets, just for my own sake when I'm going through a project. Let's take a hospital that's got a ton of rooms in there. A lot of them look very similar. I use targeting more just to keep me straight. But you don't have to use targets, because you can just use features. So I'm going to pick a couple more. I can't remember which ones I picked before. Let's pick kind of the base here of this pole, the base of this pole.

AUDIENCE: How close do you need to be when you're picking your points?

SHAWN HERRING: They say within a foot, and they are AutoDesk, but I try to pick pretty close. So I don't know if anyone has any feedback there, but I try to pick as close as I can. The closer, the better.

So let's pick something completely random. Let's say we think that is that point, and let's pick this point. Once I pick that third point, it's going to attempt again to register the groups together if we hover over here. So it says "poor match found," and it's red. And that actually looked better than the other one.

But if you pick-- let's do that again. Let's do something completely-- let's pick our third point over here. There. That's a little bit more obvious that it's off, right? OK. So you don't have to accept that. You're not accepting any results until you hit Merge Scan. And even once we hit Merge Scan, there's another option to reject it.

So I'm going to remove those points. I can move them, but I kind of like to just delete them. Let's pick another point. One, two, three, so right around here. If I hover over these points, I select-- you've got that X to delete it, and you also have this little teardrop, which I can mark as a survey point.

So if I have control-- and maybe that's why you could use checkerboard targets, because you can survey those targets, center a target, and key in your X, Y, Z. So if I want to tie this into some sort of control, I can just easily add that as a survey point and call it good. I'm not going to do that here. I think I'm on third. Something like that.

So that one's green. So that one we're happy with. We think it works. We're good. It's going to give us a registration report as well. I'll show you that. So once we've picked our three points, we're good with the preview, the result, I'm going to hit Merge Scan. And so we've got group one, two scans, group two, six scans. It's now going to merge into one group, so I'm going to hit Merge Scan.

So pretty quick. So we can look at a top-down view. So that merged those pretty quick. Not a ton of time it took there.

AUDIENCE: Can I ask a quick question?

SHAWN HERRING: Yeah, you sure can.

AUDIENCE: Can you merge different compatible ones [INAUDIBLE]?

SHAWN HERRING: I've never done it. I don't see why you couldn't, though. That's a good question.

AUDIENCE: There are applications that we can't always use directly [INAUDIBLE].

SHAWN HERRING: That'd be something to try. I don't see why you couldn't, though. I'm going to do that later. See, now you're making me work. So I did the scan with like a C10, and I did one with the FARO. I can bring them all in. I'll give it a shot.

Again, we can look at the 3D preview, but we can see kind of what happened there. Let me go to scan seven now. And again, the unregistered ones are the ones with the question mark. So I want to go ahead and get that registered. So my register scanned seven to scan eight. And as I was saying before, it's always automatically registering it as you switch scan to scan.

So I like this one. So I don't even need to pick any points on this scan. I'm just going to go in and just hit Merge Scan. Looks good, let's hit Merge Scan.

You'll get this often. If it's good, and if it meets all of whatever those percentages are supposed to be, it's going to automatically send it over. Used to it'd turn green, yellow, red. Now it just goes yellow or red, and if it's green, it automatically does it. But you can hover over, and you can see the result.

So if we-- I'll zoom in here for you. It's saying we have a balance of 1.8 and overlap of 2.5, and points in common with the six millimeter accuracy of 88%. That's actually pretty low. Typically I probably would try to not accept that. These ones happen to be far apart, so I'm not surprised by these two-- ah, wrong button-- these two things here.

A balance of 20% and overlap of 30% and accuracy of like 98% is typically what you want to see there. But in some cases, depending on the scan situation, you may just be able to accept that and be good. So that's the second refinement process. So it gives you another chance to reject it, pick more points, and move forward. For the sake of this class, I'm just going to hit approve.

One more group that we have to do here. We've got scan eight to scan nine. So we're going to pick a few points. Although that's green, I'm still going to pick a few points, if I can remember where I'm at here.

Let's use this building. So I'm going to use this area here. This one. I could probably get closer. I think in my handout I said we're going to do a bridge, so I'm glad nobody noticed we're not doing a bridge. And I hope those that wanted to see a bridge don't mind.

All right. Where am I at? One more point. Let's just choose this grate over here. So again, random points without targeting.

On this one-- let's come closer to here, actually-- this one I was in my truck. It was freezing in Billings, Montana. And so I mounted the tripod on the back in my truck, and you can run it from your phone, and that was great. So besides a few of those sphere targets, I was not getting out of the truck.

We're good there. We're going to go ahead and merge that. Give it a minute.

OK. So that's all of the scans. Once all your scans from all groups have been combined into one, you've now got the option to index those scans. We'll do a couple things prior to indexing.

Indexing is really the last step before you go in there and you clean up your point cloud-- you delete points, you remove people, trees, that type of stuff. The indexing probably takes more than importing, so it's another one, hit that button, go to lunch or something. It does take a little while to index those scans.

But there's a few things that we can do here. So again, we can inspect it. We can see our registration report, so we can come in here and look. You usually want to see those green. We can see why we're not. You've got a registration report.

We can go and look at RGB. So I'm always set to the color, but if we go to intensity, it's going to kind of take out that color. It's just going to be the grayscale intensity.

Sometimes it's easier to register that. Sometimes in a scan situation, there's no lighting, so you don't even have color. So again, you can register without that color. Sometimes it's a little bit crisper. These are like cars and stuff, people. We'll get rid of them. I'm going back to color.

A few settings that we want to look at before we index, though. Up here at the top right, we have view the scanner related settings, or the filter the data. We've got filtering here in the top. We've got advanced. We can clip the points based on a range.

There's just different options in here. Probably the more important one, though, is going to be on this advanced thing. You've got decimation, so we could reduce the number of points if we wanted to, so we can do that at this point. I think that was what you were looking for, right? Did you ask me about that? Someone was.

The coordinate system-- this is an important one. If you want it tied-- you know, we're tying it with some survey-- we could tie it with some survey control, if we want to set this to a coordinate system, this is where we do it. There's like three other places that set a coordinate system, but doesn't work. So you have to set it here. I think I noted that in the handout. That's something that I overlooked for a long time.

AUDIENCE: Can it revert your [INAUDIBLE]

SHAWN HERRING: You can do that in Civil 3D. Yeah, I think you can do-- here's the current, and there's the target. So once we export it, I could set the current to something-- I'm not going to set one, but yeah, I can pick a coordinate system here.

And then if I choose a different one for the target, when I export to RCS, it's going to apply that different coordinate system. So either one of those. I think it's the same coordinate systems that are in Civil and Map, so I don't think there's a difference in there.

AUDIENCE: Can you have [INAUDIBLE]?

SHAWN HERRING: What's that?

AUDIENCE: I don't think they have all the [INAUDIBLE] in ReCap.

SHAWN HERRING: OK. I haven't looked to see if they have all, but that'd be strange, if they have it all.

AUDIENCE: They said they were working on that, getting all the [INAUDIBLE].

SHAWN HERRING: Yeah. That's 2017.

AUDIENCE: Can you apply custom [INAUDIBLE] or additional ones?

SHAWN HERRING: Not that I know. I don't think you can. It's a good question, though. I doubt it.

AUDIENCE: But if you're still a 3D process, you can probably [INAUDIBLE].

SHAWN HERRING: Yeah. You can adjust it in Civil, but I don't think you can create anything in here. There might be some backdoor coding or something that could happen, but not natively in the software.

All right. So you want to do some of that, we're not going to do any decimation but you've got the coordinate system. You've got some filtering, and so forth. Let me go back to my scan.

The index process-- once that's been registered, we'll go to index. That's going to take a little while. We're not going to-- I'm not going to do that right now. I'm going to open one up that I just indexed. So that'd be the last step before we clean up the point cloud. So any questions there on the importing and the registration?

AUDIENCE: Can you import other types of clouds, like drone-captured [INAUDIBLE]?

SHAWN HERRING: Yeah, there's a workflow around that. You can definitely merge the two and work through those. If you want, you can shoot me an email, and I can send you a document on that. But it's not that bad.

AUDIENCE: Was the reference on there for six millimeter accuracy-- what exactly does that refer to?

SHAWN HERRING: Just the points in common for my cloud-to-cloud. So one scan to the next scan. What's the best way to explain that? Really, it's the points in common. So it's your overlap points. So we have two scans that are kind of overlapped with each other. If they're crossing like that, they're not going to be accurate.

But if they're registered right and kind of scanned right, it's just the amount of points that-- the amount of common points that are accurate to each other. What's the best way to explain that? You know. I'm trying to think of the best way to explain that, but it's just points in common, and the accuracy between those two points, all the other two billion points.

AUDIENCE: Registration [INAUDIBLE]

SHAWN HERRING: I'm going to open up another file here that's already been indexed. OK. So once it's indexed, you've got some more tools in here. So this is kind of the index scan-- a bunch of just random points out there.

A few tools we can do. So if you want to do an initial clean up, come down here to the bottom. We've got some window tools, some fencing tools, some dimensions. But I want to just get rid of a bunch of points, some of these points we just don't need.

I'm going to come to my fence tool, and I'm just going to Window-- let's just call it this area-- double click it. We can clip it. Clip it doesn't delete those points. It just kind of clips you out. I'm going to go ahead and delete those. So here at the bottom, I'm just going to hit delete, and it's going to remove those points from the scan.

So let's fence some more stuff here. I'm just going to get pretty close for today. Delete some of those. Delete some of those. So a simple tool in there-- just the fence, and delete it.

Some other things you can do-- so let's take this tree, for example, and this will really help in Civil 3D. What's the window we had, just to keep with the fence? We can do a window, but we won't do the fence. We want to get rid of this tree, but maybe we don't want to delete it.

Once I double-click it-- and I used the delete before-- there's this thing called the region. Region basically to me is a layer. So if I had those trees, to say a vegetation layer, I'm going to say New Region, and I'm going to call this trees. Hit OK. Somehow it turned green. That was just kind of coincidence there.

On here, so here in the bottom right-- and this is what you'll see in Civil 3D, too. You'll see some of these regions-- we can turn on and off the tree. So I'm going to just hide the region-- turn off the eyeball there and get that out of the scan for now. So I'm not deleting it, but turning off a layer.

So if I go down to some of these other ones here-- I'll just do a couple. Add that to the tree region, and we can kind of go through all those and clean that up pretty quick.

Same thing with buildings. There's another one that I like to use for buildings. We did the fence, the window, but there's a plane. So if I want to say let's do a plane, I'm going to pick a bunch of points along this building, and it's going to create a plane from however many other points I choose. So you can see how it's selected anything along that plane.

I can do the same thing there. I can come into my region, add a new region, and call that a building. And then I could go through there and I could keep going, and kind of clean those up. So without having automatic classification tools, that's a good way to classify your point cloud. Just add and create new regions in there.

So we could do it. We could continue on through there and get rid of some stuff. You'll see cars. You'll see people. You'll see a lot of that stuff in there. There is a new tool-- I'll tell you about it, but I don't want to push the button. It's called Clean Up. It's in a beta stage, but it goes through and it identifies unwanted points, so people and cars.

And it doesn't delete them-- forget it. We'll push the button. Let's clean it up. It's cloud-based. I'm not on the internet. Trust me, it works. You hit that, and it's going to go through and just add it to a region. Again, it doesn't delete points, and so that's a good thing.

It did a bunch of random stuff on this one, but it did get rid of my truck. In all the scans, it got rid of that. It got rid of some of the people, some of the cars passing by. So that's kind of a quick, easy cleanup tool that's in the beta process. So we can edit, we can delete them. We can add features to regions. Do a few different cleanup things there.

Some of the other tools here-- we'll just blow through the ReCap stuff real quick. How do you want to see these? First, concrete slab verification-- this works really well, so we can do elevation analysis. We can do intensities. Scan location, so that's kind of a different color per location. Just different ways of viewing that point cloud.

AUDIENCE: Can you go to the lighting options?

SHAWN HERRING: Want to go to the lighting?

AUDIENCE: The points are right there.

SHAWN HERRING: Yeah, these ones-- so let me go back to my RGB lighting. It's kind of like a camera, an exposure. So in this case, I was scanning in the middle of the day, with sun everywhere. So it kind of takes the exposure from the RGB and removes certain points.

Again, when you're scanning in the light, sometimes those scans look pretty bad in RGB but they're great in the intensity. That kind of allows you to stay in RGB but remove that bright light. So it's kind of more camera-related. Shader model-- I never really mess with these. It's not doing too much.

AUDIENCE: Like you're saying, sometimes [INAUDIBLE] intensity and the elevation [INAUDIBLE].

SHAWN HERRING: Say that again, I'm sorry.

AUDIENCE: Some of these settings here-- I don't know if you know what I'm asking, but when you're in the other-- not the RGB but it's the intensity or elevation, I've seen some dramatic changes, but I don't know why those changes occur.

SHAWN HERRING: With the lighting on?

AUDIENCE: No, all these things.

SHAWN HERRING: With all of them.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

SHAWN HERRING: OK. Honestly, I'm not 100% sure why those do some of that. I don't mess with them too much.

AUDIENCE: You don't use them either?

SHAWN HERRING: Yeah.

AUDIENCE: That's just what I was going to ask.

SHAWN HERRING: I know the lighting is more with the camera and so forth, the shade. Again, that's not doing anything. The edge highlighting, that is what it says-- just highlighting the edges of buildings and roads and all that. Why you would use that, I don't know why you would use it. But there's an option there. I can't think of a good case to use that.

AUDIENCE: If you go to intensity and turn [INAUDIBLE] lighting on, it's a little different. I mean, it's not radically, and I don't know what use it is [INAUDIBLE].

SHAWN HERRING: Yeah. Not 100% sure on that. Some of those I haven't really saw a value to use, so I haven't looked at it very much. Maybe I should.

I'm going to get back to something. You can look at different size of your points, point display. I usually drop it down to one. Update the origin-- so if you're going into Revit, this is not a bad idea to-- you can set like zero, zero, or whatever where you want, and you can set the coordinates to match into Revit. We often go into Revit.

This just turns on certain things. So the mirror balls, let's go back to-- these are called mirror balls. Those are basically your scanned locations. This just turns them on or off.

If I go into the mirror ball-- I don't think I've gone into one-- but let me double-click this one. That takes you back into that scan view, kind of that 360 panorama. It's going. So it takes you back into that scan view. We can do some measurements.

We can do some markups, some noting. So I can add a note in here. I don't even know what to say, but we'll add a note. So when you share this to the cloud, maybe you're sharing this with someone who doesn't have ReCap, they can see your notes. They can see your markups, and so forth. When I go back to my 3D view, those notes are still there. So I can make those notes in either option.

We're not going to look at too much of the navigation. I think we're good as far as the ReCap side. Any questions on the ReCap, just kind of the quick cleanup that we went through and registration? Yeah.

AUDIENCE: Now, when you work [INAUDIBLE]

SHAWN HERRING: No. No. In fact, I think it'd be a lot easier to work with it in Civil 3D if you brought it into ReCap. I mean, you can do that in the free ReCap, so it doesn't take ultimate to do that.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

SHAWN HERRING: Yeah, I'd bring it-- because you're ultimately probably wanting to get it into Civil 3D, right?

AUDIENCE: Oh, I bring the text files [INAUDIBLE]

SHAWN HERRING: I'll show you at the end here why I would use ReCap, because of the surface creation, some of the cleanup that you can do for the bare ground, and maybe a volume calc or something. So I would bring it through ReCap, and then bring the ReCap file to Civil 3D, which I'll do. That might save you some time there.

So I think we're good there. The last step, I would export this out. If I just bring in an RCP, I could bring this into Civil 3D without a problem. But some of those edits that we made, some of those clipping, deleting the points don't quite come across. You'll still come in with a bunch of that stuff not cleaned up.

AUDIENCE: When you export RCP, can you turn off certain regions and then you export some of those regions for [INAUDIBLE]?

SHAWN HERRING: Yup. So in this case, here's the import. Here's the export. Export's going to take a while, so I'm not going to. But the export options are CP, RCS, PTS, E57, and PCG. So pretty much anything can take-- any software, whether we're using AutoDesk or not-- will take an E57 or a PTS or something.

We're going to export to RCS, which I already did. And so you select that, you save it out. Simple export. Let me close this down. Let's get into Civil 3D now. So that's the recap side of it.

So we've got to do a little bit of setup real quick in Civil 3D for the "Field to Finish." So I want to make sure we get that. That doesn't take long at all, then we'll bring our recap file in. I'm going to start with-- probably should've started with the template.

A few things to set up. So on the survey tabs-- we're on our tool space. We're on the survey tab-- we're just going to look at a couple things here. We've got line work code set, and we've got the figure prefix database. Let's do the line work code step first.

I'm going to right click here and go to New. I already created one, but we're going to go to New. And let's call it something here. So this is probably the simplest thing to set up in Civil 3D. As we're coding it in the field, or as we're going to do today, code it in the office, we're going to use some of these special codes, but we're just going to use a few. So when we want this to automatically draw our line work, we need to tell it where to begin, where to end, where curves are, and so forth.

So the special codes here-- it's as simple as changing Begin. I see a lot of people do B, begin feature. I could have a one there for begin. Very simple set up. So we're going to have B for begin, E for end, CLS for close. We're going to leave most of this. The curves-- we're going to begin curve BC, end curve EC, point on curve OC.

So something-- if you're coding out in the field, something that may take an extra few minutes in the field, by just adding this simple code in there, as you guys know that are using the automated line work, that will save you some time in the office. So I'm going to leave most of those. I don't think they even changed anything. Most of those are pretty standard.

Any questions on the code set? That's probably the easiest thing. So the code set is telling it how to draw it. The figure prefix database that we need to set up is kind of telling it what to draw and what style, what layer, so forth.

So we're going to create a new figure prefix database, if I can remember which ones I did. We're just going do some TBC, and a few things in there. So same thing-- I'm going to create that new one, right click, and go to Manage Figure Prefix Database. And this is fairly simple set up-- we're just going to hit the plus sign here.

And let's do a TBC. So we need to give it a name. Whether it's a brake line or not, we can say yes. Whether it's a lot line or not, I'm going to say no. A layer-- let's throw it on existing curb-- and a style-- curb. This could get pretty long. We can add another one in there. I'm going to do edge of pavement, so EOP.

Again, whatever you want to add, make these say. Brake line. Layer. If I don't have a layer-- if my layer doesn't exist and I create one here, in this EOP, I actually think it does that-- it's going to create a new layer in your drawing. So you don't have to go to Layer Manager. Whatever you do here is going to create a new layer.

AUDIENCE: Are you doing this every time you go out in the field for every project, or do you have your list of templates where that's already in there, in your workflow?

SHAWN HERRING: Yeah. That's a good question. This is the one-time set up. You may tweak it here and there, like anything else, but yeah. You just have to set it up one time. So this one might take an hour, depending on how extensive your list is. But yeah, it's a one time thing. It's a database. I'll show you where it saves it. You can throw it on the network or whatever, but yeah, you definitely don't have to do this every single time. This is a one time.

AUDIENCE: Just be careful when you [INAUDIBLE]

SHAWN HERRING: What's that?

AUDIENCE: Be careful if you're on a server that it go [INAUDIBLE]

SHAWN HERRING: On the figure prefix database? I've never seen that. I'll look at that, because I've never seen that. We've put it on a lot of servers.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

SHAWN HERRING: Interesting. Yeah, we should look at that. I've never seen the need for that.

Let's see-- layer style. Let's do EOP here again. Asphalt. Let's keep going. So let's say we have something close, maybe sidewalk, which is kind of the same. We've got the same style. We can copy these. So I'm going to copy this TBC one down, and I'm just going to change the name-- sidewalk.

So you can see it kind of kept the same properties, and then I can change just minor things here if I wanted to. Fences, buildings, whatever it is that you want to add in here. So again, this one might be a little time consuming to set up the first time-- you know, spend a few hours, but that's definitely going to be worth it.

Any questions? I'm not going to finish this one but any questions on this part of it, the figure prefix database? This is the line work. It's the layer. It's the style. It's the survey figure that it's going to draw. So those are really the two things you need for "Field to Finish," for the most part. Line work code set, which is very simple. That's the beginning and ending, and then figure prefix database.

There's also an equipment database. We're not going to mess with that, but I'll just show you what it is. Has anyone ever messed with that? Have you? OK. That's more equipment related, depending on what you're using-- just some standard deviations, and so forth, in there. So again you can mess with that. We're not going to change that today. So just that simple set up that we need there to run it. Align our code set, figure prefix database.

So let's bring in that ReCap file. I'm going to go to the Insert tab. We're going to go to Attach. It attaches as an extra. Go ahead and select Attach here. This AutoDesk ReCap launches ReCap, if it works.

My ReCap's already open. It should launch ReCap. There we go. All right. Let's go to Attach, and let's bring in the RCS file that we exported.

So that file is two gig. That's a big file, right? There's a lot of points in there. If I was bringing this in with any other format beside ReCap, this would take a little while. So two gig's a big file.

So I'm going to choose that. I'm going to hit Open. Just like an extra-- full path, insertion point, all that fun stuff. I'm going hit OK. And it's in there. It doesn't really think of it more than a polyline-- there's really nothing in there.

And that's why I would use the ReCap engine for like an LAS file, or something that's so big, because that engine just allows it to run so much more smoothly. It's crazy how quick some of those come in. So simple, right? Just import. Any questions on that?

If we select our point cloud-- if we select our point cloud, we get some tools up here on the ribbon. Similar-- we've got point size. I don't want to mess with that too much. The level of detail, how we want to display it and orbit it. Scan colors-- so we've got some of those same things. We can see the elevation, so forth, in there.

Transparency-- let's zoom in a little bit. I find it easier to adjust my transparency when I'm picking points, because you can kind of see the quality I think looks actually pretty good when it comes to messing with some of these. It kind of helps me to go around and see. So I'm going to set that. I'm just going to leave it whatever we set it there.

So some of those same tools-- same tools that ReCap has. We've got some cropping options. So in this one, I don't want to do the whole file. Let's just crop down a small portion of it.

So I'm going to come in here to crop-- do a polygon and just kind of crop that out. Hit Enter. Keep the points inside or outside. We're going to keep it on the inside of that, then we're good. Didn't delete anything, just cropped it.

One thing I like to use is there is a cropping state. So we've cropped this one, so I'm going to go ahead and save this as a new cropping state. I'm just going to name it Area One. That way, if I uncrop everything, I don't have to recrop that. I have my states saved all the time.

So here's Area One-- I can go back to that area. So that's something I like to use. I like to crop those down and just work on small portions at a time.

Some other stuff you can play with that we're not going to get into today, but there's some section planing. We can kind of cut some sections in there. Very minimal extraction tools-- we can extract the center line of like a pipe or a cylindrical object, extract corners, edges, and so forth.

So if that's something you want to look at, you guys can take a look at that. It's kind of more building related. And then in a little bit I'll come to create point cloud from surface. We'll look at that. So some of those tools that you can play with-- fairly simple, nothing too bad to it. Questions on that?

AUDIENCE: On the extraction tool, what does it do when you extract [INAUDIBLE]

SHAWN HERRING: Yeah. It creates some line work-- polylines and stuff.

AUDIENCE: Have you plugged it in [INAUDIBLE]

SHAWN HERRING: No. I haven't found it to work very well. There are some third party-- I know a lot of people are probably thinking that. I wouldn't use Clear Edge or Qubit or whatever for that, right? And I would.

But without going out and buying a third party software-- we're just kind of showing some of the tools. There are some third party-- I know AutoDesk. I think AutoDesk's working on some stuff. They better be working on some stuff. I know everyone needs some of those tools in there. But for now, we don't have them.

So let's go ahead and pick some points. We've got our databases that we set-- the line work codes set. We have our scan in there. And now we can either trace it, draw some lines. I'm going to pick some points, though, just for show. But we'll do a couple different things.

One thing I would turn on is-- I'm going to go to my O-snap settings, my objects snap settings. And there's a 3D objects snap. And there are some snap settings that are just for point clouds. So I make sure to turn on my 3D objects snap. You've got nodes, intersection corners, all that. I'm just going to go nodes for today. So I'm going to turn everything else off. We're just going to snap to some nodes. And hit OK.

From the Home tab, I'm going to create some points. I'm going to do a few line segments, and then I'm going to open a different file, and we're going to be done. So I'm going to go to points. Point creation tools, or-- either way you want to do it. I'm going to go to this top one.

Make sure my styles are good. I think we're fine there. We're not going to mess with anything. And so I'm going to create some points manually for now. A bunch of different ways that we could do this-- I'm going to keep it fairly simple. We'll just go manual.

And I'm going to come in. I'm going to do my edge of pavement. I might change the transparency a little bit. Can you guys even see that? Is that easier to see? You could have said that like 20 minutes ago. All right. Thanks.

All right. Let's go manual. So we're going to pick some points. I'm going to get close for now. I'm guessing that's edge of pavement. You'll get the point of it.

So now I'm going to enter my description. So just like I'm coding out in the field-- again, whether we're coding in the field or in the office-- I'm going to do beginning, edge of pavement, and hit Enter there. I'm going to let the elevation just take whatever the elevation is.

We're going to come down here, and here's the curve. So I want to say begin curve, edge of pavement. I want to take a couple points on curve. So I'm going to go OC, edge of pavement. I've got my points coming in. I'm going to change that scale in just a second here.

Next one-- on curve, end curve, edge of pavement. Then we're going to kind of go down the road. And so on these ones, I'm just going to go a little bit quicker. We'll go edge of pavement. And we could do probably a lot more accurate if we're picking right.

But we're going to cruise down the road. Pick edge of pavement. OK. So picking a bunch of points. I'll get to a stopping point over here. So let's just say it stops here. We're going to do end, edge of pavement. So just picking some points. It's kind of hard to see those points. There. Something like that.

OK. So just picking some points-- let's do the buildings. I could go from a top-down view, maybe. I could draw that with line work, or let's just do some more points here. Again, building. What did I do? BLBG? I did, right?

I'm just going to come all the way down to the end of it here. Actually this one is a weird building. So building-- let's just make that one quick. Pick a bunch of those corners. I'm going to end it right here. End building.

OK. So we could keep going. You guys get the gist of it. So we're just kind of creating those points. We're coding those points however we want. We do the centerline, we do the sidewalk, we do our trees.

We could spend all day picking points in here. The purpose is really just to draw the line work. And so that's kind of the next step in there. Questions on that-- on picking points, why we coded it, or anything? You guys are all there, right? OK.

AUDIENCE: Looking at names on the building, how would you do that, to make sure you're not getting the point on a hyphen or [INAUDIBLE]?

SHAWN HERRING: Yeah. So I would go from a different angle. So I put it in 3D.

AUDIENCE: Do you ever use two views at the same time [INAUDIBLE]?

SHAWN HERRING: Yeah, definitely. You can. So let's split our viewport. So what he's saying is using two views. Yes. I could have this on a top view, and then maybe I could rotate this. So let's come in and-- yeah, exactly. So you can see exactly where you're picking points. Not a bad way. Yeah, so I'd probably do some. If you're not wanting to pick ease or you're wanting to pick ease, I'd just get to that 3D view.

So I'm going to open up one that already has a bunch of points picked. Same file, same points, just a bunch of other ones, because we don't want to pick a ton of points. So I'm going to go to my top view. I'm going to turn off the point cloud. So again, it's in the xrefs. I'm just going to unload it like you would an xref, and we're going to have our points.

And so we have everything set up. We want to draw the line work in there. So I want to go to a couple different ways.

We're going to go to Insert. We're going to go to Import Survey Data here. Specify the database. I'm going to create a new one-- we've got AU2015. I always like to check my database settings to make sure it's not international [? foot? ?]

AUDIENCE: Why does it do that?

SHAWN HERRING: I don't know. I wish they would default it the other way.

AUDIENCE: So you could do metric or imperial?

SHAWN HERRING: Yeah. More people, I think-- they just don't know to go check that. Why would you go check that? Everything else is US survey [? foot. ?]

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

SHAWN HERRING: Well, I mean everything else in your drawing. Sorry. Yeah.

AUDIENCE: Except in South Carolina.

SHAWN HERRING: Really? I didn't know that.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

SHAWN HERRING: Catch up with us. I didn't know that in South Carolina.

AUDIENCE: Do you guys know the difference between the two [INAUDIBLE]?

SHAWN HERRING: So I had a city in Idaho-- not to be named, but it's a big city in Idaho. It's the only one. And he's been doing everything.

And he left it international foot. For a block, it doesn't matter. You know, 400 foot sidewalk-- doesn't matter. But he did like a nine mile road, and everything by the end of that nine miles, it started to add up. And so it was not until they got to the construction stage that they caught it.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

SHAWN HERRING: So that's something to check. So you could set up a dummy database and copy that database, and it always has your preset settings. I've done that. But it's something you definitely want to check on that.

AUDIENCE: Does anybody here use the magnet tools that are based in the pop up here, like the integrated survey tools [INAUDIBLE]?

AUDIENCE: I use SYNTAG. We have magnet tools, but now it's slightly different [INAUDIBLE].

SHAWN HERRING: I haven't used that. So I created the database, edited the survey settings. We're going to hit Next. Specify data source-- again, if you're coding it and you're doing this out in the field, you've probably got a field book or point from a file, or something. Or you use points in this drawing, so the points that we've selected in this drawing.

You can select the points in here. And it will go. It's going to ask us what points. We can do all numbers group selection. We're just going to all. I'm going to hit Enter. We're going to hit Next here.

Specify the network-- we don't need to worry about specifying a network. Let's skip that. Import options-- so our figure prefix database. I'm going to use one that's already set there. But there would be our list of databases that we created.

Process the line work. Yeah. That's kind of the purpose of it. We're going to say yes. Line work code set, event name-- all that stuff, we're going to leave default. So we want to make sure we've got the right database, the right code set, process line work.

So once I hit finish, it's going to draw in that line work based on how we coded it. So I could have traced everything with a polyline, or something. But this gave me my points, and this gave me my survey figures and my brake lines that we can kind of create that [INAUDIBLE] from. Kind of works, right?

Any questions on that? For those that don't use it, I mean, again, if you're coding it out in the field, you're just adding in a beginning. You're just adding an ending. You're not really adding a lot of time to your fieldwork-- an extra few minutes probably. But to bring that in the office and have that drawn in there probably is the big timesaver.

So whether we're doing it in the field or we're kind of extracting stuff from a scan, it works quite well. Questions on that? I think I have one last thing. We may end this a little bit early.

I'm going to open up another file. Stockpile volumes. So this one is more-- this is from a GoPro. Tied to control survey and everything. I kind of cropped this down already, but this is from a drone flight. This one is going to be as accurate as you want it to be-- depends on your control.

But there's a couple different ways. So instead of picking points, we could do-- you know, if we're doing a volume calc, maybe we just pick the toe of that pile. So let's do that real quick. So I'm going to use a feature line. So instead of picking points, we're going to go in and create feature line.

Create a feature line. Let me just check my style so it shows up. And just like we were connecting those points-- it's kind of hard to see. We're going to get close-- as I snap to those, it's going to pick up the elevation. So I could quickly come in here and kind of trace the toe of that slope. I'd be a lot more accurate if I was actually doing it.

Crap. Don't delete your stuff. I need to get one in there. I'm just being close for now. So that's going to give us the toe for that slope.

Again with the ReCap file, you can create a surface pretty easily. I'm going to select this, and that last tool on the ribbon is create surface from point cloud. Another reason why I'd run it through ReCap, if you have maybe an LAS or something.

Similar to some of the other tools-- you just name it, give it a style. I'll leave the triangles and points on there. Point cloud selection-- so if I leave it as selected with the whole object, it's going to do the entire thing. I could window this in, just let the entire point cloud do a window or something to narrow it down.

If I have a large point, maybe just want to surface of a small portion of it, use one of those tools. I'm going to do the whole thing on this one. This also has a filtering, so it's got a couple different methods in here.

Don't ask what [? creating ?] interpolation, the calculations behind that do. I have no idea. It's pretty smart. But that's a good way to kind of weed out some of those things.

A few different options in here for filtering. If it's already bare ground, you just don't need to worry about that. You can just go to no filter. But again, you do have several options here. So I'm going to say no filter and create surface. You can keep working.

AUDIENCE: You're not necessarily [INAUDIBLE]?

SHAWN HERRING: At this point, no. Not on this one.

All right. I'm going to unload that xref. OK. And there's that surface-- there's that tin surface. I mean, this is a smaller stockpile, but it didn't take very long to create a surface. If we look at the top view-- that's a horrible style. That's a lot of points. There.

So there's the surface. There's my stockpile. So I can do my volume calcs by that. Pretty simple tool, but it works well. Again, try bringing in an LAS file and as a point cloud, creating a surface from it or something, and then look at the time it's going to take you.

So just to run it through the ReCap engine I think opens up a whole different thing for you. I think it's pretty valuable, whether you use the free version or not, because the free version will do all that. You guys know how to do volumes. I'm not going to do a volume calc for you. Should know how to do volumes, right?

AUDIENCE: Looks like it's [INAUDIBLE]

SHAWN HERRING: Pretty large, yeah. You'd want to decimate it a little bit. You'd probably want to clean it up. You'd probably want to do a few things to it, depending on the size of the project. This isn't going to be too bad, unless I have my triangles turned on. But yeah, you saw that mesh. It was crazy. There's a billion points, and you need to attend with a billion points. Yeah. But getting it in there and working with it being that ReCap file actually really helps.

AUDIENCE: So [INAUDIBLE]

SHAWN HERRING: I would-- depending on what that cloud is, I'd probably decimate it prior to bringing it in, and then maybe even weeding it afterwards. Maybe doing a simplify-- I don't know if you ever use the simplified surface? You know, that'll remove a bunch of points. So that's another option. So I'd probably do both, really, if it's a huge surface. Decimate it before and then simplify it after.

AUDIENCE: You guys run into any performance issues, depending on your [INAUDIBLE]?

SHAWN HERRING: Depending on what?

AUDIENCE: Your [? train ?] sizes and your [INAUDIBLE].

SHAWN HERRING: Yeah. I've got a pretty good laptop. There's better out there. But depending on the scan and the surface, it will bog it down a little bit. Being able to crop things down and maybe create multiple surfaces, though, will help. It just depends on the machine. Questions on that stuff?

OK so hopefully that helped. The goal was to run through the ReCap stuff and get some things registered, and just work with that a little bit in Civil 3D without having to bring in third party software. And just get more familiar with the "Field to Finish" part-- the very simple set up of that, how you can use it. Got a question?

AUDIENCE: I've got a question about when you have your point clouds, before you would do the process of creating the points, could you just define the section on the point cloud and then have it automatically draw [INAUDIBLE]?

SHAWN HERRING: Not currently. I know there's a feature extraction tool a while ago that's not really available in the lab. Using out of the box Civil 3D, no. But there's definitely tools out there that will speed up the process and do it. So some of those are quite an investment. But out of the box Civil 3D, which is what I was working with, doesn't have anything really usable.

I know a little bit more than I say, but you never know who's in here. There's some good stuff coming, I think. Come talk to me after and I'll tell you.

So hopefully that was helpful. Hopefully that kind of introduced you to a few new things. If not, well, I hope maybe there's a couple things there. But we're a little bit early. If you guys have questions, I'll hang around.

On the handout-- if you download the handout, if you want the data, feel free anytime. I didn't want to upload two gigs' worth of data. But whatever you guys want, whether it's documentation or whatever, feel free anytime.

So I know some of you know me, a lot of you don't. But you can reach out anytime. I'm more than happy to answer questions, or email you documents or data sets or files, or answer some support issues, if you really have it. That's it. If you need anything, let me know. Appreciate it, guys.

[APPLAUSE]

______
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Qualtrics
We use Qualtrics to let you give us feedback via surveys or online forms. You may be randomly selected to participate in a survey, or you can actively decide to give us feedback. We collect data to better understand what actions you took before filling out a survey. This helps us troubleshoot issues you may have experienced. Qualtrics Privacy Policy
Akamai mPulse
We use Akamai mPulse to collect data about your behavior on our sites. This may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, your IP address or device ID, and your Autodesk ID. We use this data to measure our site performance and evaluate the ease of your online experience, so we can enhance our features. We also use advanced analytics methods to optimize your experience with email, customer support, and sales. Akamai mPulse Privacy Policy
Digital River
We use Digital River to collect data about your behavior on our sites. This may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, your IP address or device ID, and your Autodesk ID. We use this data to measure our site performance and evaluate the ease of your online experience, so we can enhance our features. We also use advanced analytics methods to optimize your experience with email, customer support, and sales. Digital River Privacy Policy
Dynatrace
We use Dynatrace to collect data about your behavior on our sites. This may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, your IP address or device ID, and your Autodesk ID. We use this data to measure our site performance and evaluate the ease of your online experience, so we can enhance our features. We also use advanced analytics methods to optimize your experience with email, customer support, and sales. Dynatrace Privacy Policy
Khoros
We use Khoros to collect data about your behavior on our sites. This may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, your IP address or device ID, and your Autodesk ID. We use this data to measure our site performance and evaluate the ease of your online experience, so we can enhance our features. We also use advanced analytics methods to optimize your experience with email, customer support, and sales. Khoros Privacy Policy
Launch Darkly
We use Launch Darkly to collect data about your behavior on our sites. This may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, your IP address or device ID, and your Autodesk ID. We use this data to measure our site performance and evaluate the ease of your online experience, so we can enhance our features. We also use advanced analytics methods to optimize your experience with email, customer support, and sales. Launch Darkly Privacy Policy
New Relic
We use New Relic to collect data about your behavior on our sites. This may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, your IP address or device ID, and your Autodesk ID. We use this data to measure our site performance and evaluate the ease of your online experience, so we can enhance our features. We also use advanced analytics methods to optimize your experience with email, customer support, and sales. New Relic Privacy Policy
Salesforce Live Agent
We use Salesforce Live Agent to collect data about your behavior on our sites. This may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, your IP address or device ID, and your Autodesk ID. We use this data to measure our site performance and evaluate the ease of your online experience, so we can enhance our features. We also use advanced analytics methods to optimize your experience with email, customer support, and sales. Salesforce Live Agent Privacy Policy
Wistia
We use Wistia to collect data about your behavior on our sites. This may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, your IP address or device ID, and your Autodesk ID. We use this data to measure our site performance and evaluate the ease of your online experience, so we can enhance our features. We also use advanced analytics methods to optimize your experience with email, customer support, and sales. Wistia Privacy Policy
Tealium
We use Tealium to collect data about your behavior on our sites. This may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. We use this data to measure our site performance and evaluate the ease of your online experience, so we can enhance our features. We also use advanced analytics methods to optimize your experience with email, customer support, and sales. Tealium Privacy Policy
Upsellit
We use Upsellit to collect data about your behavior on our sites. This may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. We use this data to measure our site performance and evaluate the ease of your online experience, so we can enhance our features. We also use advanced analytics methods to optimize your experience with email, customer support, and sales. Upsellit Privacy Policy
CJ Affiliates
We use CJ Affiliates to collect data about your behavior on our sites. This may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. We use this data to measure our site performance and evaluate the ease of your online experience, so we can enhance our features. We also use advanced analytics methods to optimize your experience with email, customer support, and sales. CJ Affiliates Privacy Policy
Commission Factory
We use Commission Factory to collect data about your behavior on our sites. This may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. We use this data to measure our site performance and evaluate the ease of your online experience, so we can enhance our features. We also use advanced analytics methods to optimize your experience with email, customer support, and sales. Commission Factory Privacy Policy
Google Analytics (Strictly Necessary)
We use Google Analytics (Strictly Necessary) to collect data about your behavior on our sites. This may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, your IP address or device ID, and your Autodesk ID. We use this data to measure our site performance and evaluate the ease of your online experience, so we can enhance our features. We also use advanced analytics methods to optimize your experience with email, customer support, and sales. Google Analytics (Strictly Necessary) Privacy Policy
Typepad Stats
We use Typepad Stats to collect data about your behaviour on our sites. This may include pages you’ve visited. We use this data to measure our site performance and evaluate the ease of your online experience, so we can enhance our platform to provide the most relevant content. This allows us to enhance your overall user experience. Typepad Stats Privacy Policy
Geo Targetly
We use Geo Targetly to direct website visitors to the most appropriate web page and/or serve tailored content based on their location. Geo Targetly uses the IP address of a website visitor to determine the approximate location of the visitor’s device. This helps ensure that the visitor views content in their (most likely) local language.Geo Targetly Privacy Policy
SpeedCurve
We use SpeedCurve to monitor and measure the performance of your website experience by measuring web page load times as well as the responsiveness of subsequent elements such as images, scripts, and text.SpeedCurve Privacy Policy
Qualified
Qualified is the Autodesk Live Chat agent platform. This platform provides services to allow our customers to communicate in real-time with Autodesk support. We may collect unique ID for specific browser sessions during a chat. Qualified Privacy Policy

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Improve your experience – allows us to show you what is relevant to you

Google Optimize
We use Google Optimize to test new features on our sites and customize your experience of these features. To do this, we collect behavioral data while you’re on our sites. This data may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, your IP address or device ID, your Autodesk ID, and others. You may experience a different version of our sites based on feature testing, or view personalized content based on your visitor attributes. Google Optimize Privacy Policy
ClickTale
We use ClickTale to better understand where you may encounter difficulties with our sites. We use session recording to help us see how you interact with our sites, including any elements on our pages. Your Personally Identifiable Information is masked and is not collected. ClickTale Privacy Policy
OneSignal
We use OneSignal to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by OneSignal. Ads are based on both OneSignal data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that OneSignal has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to OneSignal to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. OneSignal Privacy Policy
Optimizely
We use Optimizely to test new features on our sites and customize your experience of these features. To do this, we collect behavioral data while you’re on our sites. This data may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, your IP address or device ID, your Autodesk ID, and others. You may experience a different version of our sites based on feature testing, or view personalized content based on your visitor attributes. Optimizely Privacy Policy
Amplitude
We use Amplitude to test new features on our sites and customize your experience of these features. To do this, we collect behavioral data while you’re on our sites. This data may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, your IP address or device ID, your Autodesk ID, and others. You may experience a different version of our sites based on feature testing, or view personalized content based on your visitor attributes. Amplitude Privacy Policy
Snowplow
We use Snowplow to collect data about your behavior on our sites. This may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, your IP address or device ID, and your Autodesk ID. We use this data to measure our site performance and evaluate the ease of your online experience, so we can enhance our features. We also use advanced analytics methods to optimize your experience with email, customer support, and sales. Snowplow Privacy Policy
UserVoice
We use UserVoice to collect data about your behaviour on our sites. This may include pages you’ve visited. We use this data to measure our site performance and evaluate the ease of your online experience, so we can enhance our platform to provide the most relevant content. This allows us to enhance your overall user experience. UserVoice Privacy Policy
Clearbit
Clearbit allows real-time data enrichment to provide a personalized and relevant experience to our customers. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID.Clearbit Privacy Policy
YouTube
YouTube is a video sharing platform which allows users to view and share embedded videos on our websites. YouTube provides viewership metrics on video performance. YouTube Privacy Policy

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Customize your advertising – permits us to offer targeted advertising to you

Adobe Analytics
We use Adobe Analytics to collect data about your behavior on our sites. This may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, your IP address or device ID, and your Autodesk ID. We use this data to measure our site performance and evaluate the ease of your online experience, so we can enhance our features. We also use advanced analytics methods to optimize your experience with email, customer support, and sales. Adobe Analytics Privacy Policy
Google Analytics (Web Analytics)
We use Google Analytics (Web Analytics) to collect data about your behavior on our sites. This may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. We use this data to measure our site performance and evaluate the ease of your online experience, so we can enhance our features. We also use advanced analytics methods to optimize your experience with email, customer support, and sales. Google Analytics (Web Analytics) Privacy Policy
AdWords
We use AdWords to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by AdWords. Ads are based on both AdWords data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that AdWords has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to AdWords to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. AdWords Privacy Policy
Marketo
We use Marketo to send you more timely and relevant email content. To do this, we collect data about your online behavior and your interaction with the emails we send. Data collected may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, your IP address or device ID, email open rates, links clicked, and others. We may combine this data with data collected from other sources to offer you improved sales or customer service experiences, as well as more relevant content based on advanced analytics processing. Marketo Privacy Policy
Doubleclick
We use Doubleclick to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by Doubleclick. Ads are based on both Doubleclick data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that Doubleclick has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to Doubleclick to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. Doubleclick Privacy Policy
HubSpot
We use HubSpot to send you more timely and relevant email content. To do this, we collect data about your online behavior and your interaction with the emails we send. Data collected may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, your IP address or device ID, email open rates, links clicked, and others. HubSpot Privacy Policy
Twitter
We use Twitter to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by Twitter. Ads are based on both Twitter data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that Twitter has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to Twitter to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. Twitter Privacy Policy
Facebook
We use Facebook to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by Facebook. Ads are based on both Facebook data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that Facebook has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to Facebook to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. Facebook Privacy Policy
LinkedIn
We use LinkedIn to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by LinkedIn. Ads are based on both LinkedIn data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that LinkedIn has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to LinkedIn to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. LinkedIn Privacy Policy
Yahoo! Japan
We use Yahoo! Japan to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by Yahoo! Japan. Ads are based on both Yahoo! Japan data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that Yahoo! Japan has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to Yahoo! Japan to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. Yahoo! Japan Privacy Policy
Naver
We use Naver to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by Naver. Ads are based on both Naver data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that Naver has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to Naver to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. Naver Privacy Policy
Quantcast
We use Quantcast to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by Quantcast. Ads are based on both Quantcast data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that Quantcast has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to Quantcast to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. Quantcast Privacy Policy
Call Tracking
We use Call Tracking to provide customized phone numbers for our campaigns. This gives you faster access to our agents and helps us more accurately evaluate our performance. We may collect data about your behavior on our sites based on the phone number provided. Call Tracking Privacy Policy
Wunderkind
We use Wunderkind to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by Wunderkind. Ads are based on both Wunderkind data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that Wunderkind has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to Wunderkind to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. Wunderkind Privacy Policy
ADC Media
We use ADC Media to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by ADC Media. Ads are based on both ADC Media data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that ADC Media has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to ADC Media to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. ADC Media Privacy Policy
AgrantSEM
We use AgrantSEM to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by AgrantSEM. Ads are based on both AgrantSEM data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that AgrantSEM has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to AgrantSEM to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. AgrantSEM Privacy Policy
Bidtellect
We use Bidtellect to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by Bidtellect. Ads are based on both Bidtellect data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that Bidtellect has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to Bidtellect to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. Bidtellect Privacy Policy
Bing
We use Bing to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by Bing. Ads are based on both Bing data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that Bing has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to Bing to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. Bing Privacy Policy
G2Crowd
We use G2Crowd to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by G2Crowd. Ads are based on both G2Crowd data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that G2Crowd has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to G2Crowd to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. G2Crowd Privacy Policy
NMPI Display
We use NMPI Display to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by NMPI Display. Ads are based on both NMPI Display data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that NMPI Display has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to NMPI Display to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. NMPI Display Privacy Policy
VK
We use VK to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by VK. Ads are based on both VK data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that VK has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to VK to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. VK Privacy Policy
Adobe Target
We use Adobe Target to test new features on our sites and customize your experience of these features. To do this, we collect behavioral data while you’re on our sites. This data may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, your IP address or device ID, your Autodesk ID, and others. You may experience a different version of our sites based on feature testing, or view personalized content based on your visitor attributes. Adobe Target Privacy Policy
Google Analytics (Advertising)
We use Google Analytics (Advertising) to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by Google Analytics (Advertising). Ads are based on both Google Analytics (Advertising) data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that Google Analytics (Advertising) has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to Google Analytics (Advertising) to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. Google Analytics (Advertising) Privacy Policy
Trendkite
We use Trendkite to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by Trendkite. Ads are based on both Trendkite data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that Trendkite has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to Trendkite to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. Trendkite Privacy Policy
Hotjar
We use Hotjar to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by Hotjar. Ads are based on both Hotjar data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that Hotjar has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to Hotjar to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. Hotjar Privacy Policy
6 Sense
We use 6 Sense to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by 6 Sense. Ads are based on both 6 Sense data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that 6 Sense has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to 6 Sense to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. 6 Sense Privacy Policy
Terminus
We use Terminus to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by Terminus. Ads are based on both Terminus data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that Terminus has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to Terminus to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. Terminus Privacy Policy
StackAdapt
We use StackAdapt to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by StackAdapt. Ads are based on both StackAdapt data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that StackAdapt has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to StackAdapt to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. StackAdapt Privacy Policy
The Trade Desk
We use The Trade Desk to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by The Trade Desk. Ads are based on both The Trade Desk data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that The Trade Desk has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to The Trade Desk to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. The Trade Desk Privacy Policy
RollWorks
We use RollWorks to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by RollWorks. Ads are based on both RollWorks data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that RollWorks has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to RollWorks to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. RollWorks Privacy Policy

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