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Survey Scanner Point Cloud Processing Workflow: InfraWorks to AutoCAD Civil 3D

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Description

This class is designed to articulate the workflow of creating a topographic survey model within AutoCAD Civil 3D software by using scanner-generated point clouds (Trimble SX10) processed within InfraWorks software. Initially, we will import our point cloud into InfraWorks where it will be analyzed, processed, and filtered. We will then export data from InfraWorks and import it within AutoCAD Civil 3D for additional processing. Once in AutoCAD Civil 3D, we will process data again to create a topographic survey model. To demonstrate this workflow, we'll focus on an actual project containing a retaining wall (75 feet long x 20 feet high) in need of replacement. In this instance, our team decided to supplement a traditional (total station) topographic survey with scanner-generated point clouds to save on field time, and also to promote the safety of our survey crew.

Key Learnings

  • Learn about project setup and import of point cloud data into InfraWorks
  • Learn how to process point cloud data within InfraWorks
  • Learn how to extract relevant data from InfraWorks to be used within a topographic survey Learn how to model within AutoCAD Civil 3D
  • Learn how to import data into AutoCAD Civil 3D and create a Topographic Survey Model

Speakers_few

  • Eric Vallejo
    Eric has been working within the Civil Engineering and Land Surveying industry since 1999 and is currently employed at Missman, Inc.\IMEG Corp.Duties include Civil design, conceptual exhibit creation, Survey data processing, plan review, construction staking setup and coordination. Eric is also responsible for the creation and implementation of the firms Civil 3D and AutoCAD "Plan and Drafting Standards" along with the development of digital data management procedures and project workflow. Eric also administers Civil 3D\AutoCAD training as well as provide peer support.
  • Фотография профиля Ramesh Sridharan
    Ramesh Sridharan
    Ramesh Sridharan has versatile experience in civil infrastructure, including civil engineering, reality capture point clouds, GIS, image processing, and machine learning-based software development for over two decades. With over 20 years of experience, he has successfully driven programs in research and development, technical sales, partner marketing, product management, and customer analysis. He has experience working with customers to understand and set industry workflows that drive the technology forward. He is an expert in pushing technology to its limits and converting research findings into products that users can apply to real-life problems. He is a pioneer in reality capture point clouds that can handle and extract information from a large number of 3D datasets. Ramesh is one of the product managers for infrastructure products in Autodesk leading Reality solutions and ESRI partnership, to name a few. Ramesh is a post-graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology with a research focus in Image Processing and Artificial Intelligence.
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      Transcript

      ERIC VALLEJO: That's good. No, we're good. I think I'm up. I'm up and running. I need a cocktail, a bloody. All right. Everybody hear me OK? Cool. OK. Good to go? You're good to go.

      All right. So let's get into it my name is Eric Vallejo. I'm a land surveyor intern for IMEG corporation now. We used to be Missman Inc. We just kind of got gobbled up by IMEG, their big MEP structural engineering firm. We got brought on to actually run their civil and survey division just this past year.

      I'm the CAD manager for our engineering firm, for the civil side in this survey. My background's in GIS GPS from Hocking College out of southern Ohio. I've been land surveying, civil engineering industry, since about '99. I started out on survey field crew pounding hubs and then just kind of work my way up from there. I got a hold of the AutoCAD Civil 3D software, actually, when that was released, '14, and then Land Desktop, and then on to Civil 3D.

      I am a land surveyor intern in Iowa. And then right now my current duties, as far as my current job, I am just in charge of maintaining our CAD standards, kind of developing all the training, and also do a little bit of design survey, taking projects from field to finish. I live in Missoula, Montana.

      I'm the only one out of our corporation that actually lives in Missoula. so I work remotely. Our headquarters, our corporate office is in Rock Island, Illinois. I'm actually from the Midwest. But we have offices all across the globe, I should say.

      Helping me out today is Ramesh. He went to bed about 5:00 AM this morning.

      [LAUGHTER]

      And he's fine. So he's the man. He's the InfraWorks master. And those are his qualities.

      [LAUGHTER]

      But if you want to tell a little bit about yourself--

      RAMESH SRIDHARAN: That's a shock. Yes, I'm the product manager for Reality Capture, featured extraction or infrastructure in the AC arena. So I work with InfraWorks product, ReCap, and Civil 3D. That's where I come from. So we worked on a joint project That's what we're going to see today. I'll let him take over.

      ERIC VALLEJO: All right. So basically, yeah, the whole point of this course, what I kind of wanted articulate, was just the workflow of-- I guess just to kind of back up even little bit further, our survey crew, we have a Trimble SX10. But it's a total station first, but it is also a scanner. So the whole point of this course was to kind of put together scanning capabilities, along with a traditional survey.

      So part of that, of course, we use Autodesk software. For our Trimble product, we do have to bring it into ReCap, do a little bit of processing, then we bring it in InfraWorks. We can extract some line work, surface information, and then we can take it into Civil 3D and finish our model from there. We do take advantage of the survey database and use feature lineworks, automatic linework also with our traditional survey. So that's just kind of a general outline of the course.

      So just a little bit of background on how we collected this specific data. So I'm going to go over a specific project that we did, but this course is based on. For that specific project, we used the Trimble SX10. Again, I should've put total station first because it is a total station first, and then it is also a scanner. You could do a lot of the same process, too, if you had drones or unmanned aircraft, which we'll be getting into, as well.

      And then we do take our data. We do put it into Trimble Business Center, process that in there, and then export it out to a readable file into ReCap, then in InfraWorks and Civil 3D. Do you want to give a little brief description on ReCap InfraWorks?

      RAMESH SRIDHARAN: Just a quick note. I think many of you guys might know it, but so it looks like three different softwares. They have different purposes. So the ReCap is a [INAUDIBLE] software. Any point cloud data, you can bring it in, large point clouds, very easy visualization, zoom in, zoom out.

      So the ReCap helps you prepare the point cloud very nicely. If anyone using a terrestrial LIDAR, you can register them very nicely. There are automated self-registration tools available. It makes your job much easier on preparing the data for your project. That's the main purpose of the ReCap.

      InfraWorks, on the other hand, make the heavy lifting from the point cloud side. Especially on the infrastructure projects, it processes it, that's the automatic feature extraction. That's something we'll go through today. So that's the purpose of Infraworks from reality capture side. InfraWorks has got a lot more capabilities we'll see later.

      And Civil 3D, you guys know, is our design software. So the idea is that the software is designed in such a way that workflow goes smoothly from the customer perspective. You prep it, you do the automated processing, take the information you want for your project, take it to Civil 3D or really anywhere, and complete your project. That's the idea here. I think we'll be going through a few of these products today.

      ERIC VALLEJO: Yep. And then as far as Civil 3D, I'm assuming most of us are using Civil 3D already if you're in this class. But yeah, of course, Civil 3D is-- again, we bring our survey data into there. We do take advantage of the survey database, the automatic linework, and then combining surfaces and building our model to get ready for design.

      So just a few examples of how we use our scanning capabilities along with our traditional survey. Again, this class, the handout is kind of focused around our retaining wall assessment. For that particular project, it was a 20-foot high retaining wall, 70 foot long, kind of an awkward shape. And then you can see it's kind of in somewhat of a ravine in here.

      So for part of it, there was a safety concern for our crew to get data along the top of the wall, through the wall. But the main purpose of the project was to assess the condition of the wall to see if A, if it had to be replaced, if it could be if it could be repaired. And then, of course, outside of that, there was some traditional survey kind of a part of that.

      Some of the other projects that we do combine scanning and traditional survey. We did a baseball stadium concourse addition. So for this, there was a structure going to be built on top here, but they needed to see underneath this. So this is kind of an elevated concourse here.

      They did some scanning underneath, as well as on top, as you can see here. But they did some scanning underneath to see where rebar was, because they were going to tie structures in from the top. So we needed to see up and collect that data and put it all together and kind of assess where that structure and how it was going to be fit in structurally.

      This project here that we used is, we're actually tying in a skybridge into one of these windows here from across the street. So obviously, we did traditional survey kind of down on the bottom, and then we did we did our scanning and such up here.

      This is a floor survey in an industrial building. I can't tell you where. But basically, they're having some issues with the floor, and plus, they wanted to get a record, because they were adding a lot of equipment in there. So again, we used some traditional surveying to gauge where some critical areas were, along with combining it with some scanning.

      So going into the workflow here-- I'm going to sneak around here. Let's do this. Whoops. Which way? This way. OK.

      So again, this was kind of the raw data that we brought in to Trimble Business Center here. You can see for this particular project, we do have one, two, three setups. So we did a setup up top, we did some scanning up here, and then we did two setups down at the bottom and got a hold of this ravine here.

      So you can kind of see there's a lot of junk with point clouds. It's scanning, and it's picking up a lot of noise, is what a lot of people call it. So from here, what we typically do is, we'll take this out. We'll export it out into a readable format and then take it into ReCap. And depending on what kind of software or what kind of scanner or what kind of output you have, you might have to do a similar process, or you may be able to take them straight InfraWorks, depending.

      We can do some cleanup, and some of the stuff we can do in ReCap, we can do in Trimble Business, but actually, ReCap is pretty easy to use. So we tend to use this a little bit more, just because it's a little bit more friendly and visually pleasing. But yeah, as far as bringing in a ReCap, like I said, again, it's just kind of a nice visualization tool if you were going to kind of clean up some noise or whatnot.

      Oh my gosh. So let's say we wanted to get rid of some of this stuff in here. You could just simply draw a window around it, and then clip the inside of that, and it just gets rid of that. So go in here visualize clean it up. And then from here we-- so one of the main things we bring it into ReCap, as well, is to get that RCS file, which is that Autodesk readable format. That's the file that we're really after.

      And then once we get that RCS file, which is just a ReCap file here, then what we can do is just import it into InfraWorks. Oh, that's not it. There it is. So Ramesh can talk a little bit about InfraWorks.

      RAMESH SRIDHARAN: You guys are supposed to see this at the end.

      ERIC VALLEJO: Oh, sorry. Oh, there's the other.

      RAMESH SRIDHARAN: That's OK.

      ERIC VALLEJO: You got it.

      RAMESH SRIDHARAN: I'll switch this off. All right. So when we're trying to work on a project, I was telling Eric, we added the nice processing and the linear feature extraction capabilities for the infrastructure. We said, let's work on a project, and he brought this data up. And I thought, I want to show off the automated extraction, the line extraction, draw central lines and everything. But somehow, he found that a difficult project to work with for [? AU. ?] Thanks.

      ERIC VALLEJO: You're welcome.

      RAMESH SRIDHARAN: But you can do it.

      ERIC VALLEJO: Practical.

      RAMESH SRIDHARAN: But this was kind of a challenging project. It's a very small area. You can actually see that. But just the amount of noise you have, and the type of features you are trying to extract makes it a little bit more difficult.

      You can actually see what you initially wanted was everything. But actually, what do you want is the top of the wall here and the subterrain that goes beneath it, which were collected by the sensor, but really hard to get it out of that data set to have a surface to extractor. And it's not like a regular lineworks. Anyone who worked on the Civil 3D, like a regular line extraction, you would expect a nice, smooth line to go, not much of a jagged edges. But this is not like that.

      So the terrain itself is kind of rough, so the line does go up and down. So that was a challenging part in this particular project. But the workflow went very nice. So for any project-- this is kind of like a blueprint for the regular projects. You bring in the point cloud data after the ReCap, like Eric said.

      The first tool we'll be running is what I call point cloud terrain. So what this does is basically go through the point cloud data and remove noises. It classifies a point cloud, removes noises, and main purpose is, like the tool says, create the terrain information for you to use it. Most of the projects that that's the job for, you can actually do things with that.

      And it's one of the simplest tools to use in the point cloud industry, I would say, because you don't have to choose any parameters. Everything is optimum. If you're expert or when you become expert, you can always go into Custom. You can mess with it, but you don't have to. The optimum takes care of the parameters, depending upon your data set, very nicely.

      And I always like to put the results in a separate proposal. Whoever worked with the InfraWorks before, it has a very nice concept of proposals, like the sheets in Excel. You have the master proposal. If you want to do something, just do it on the other proposal. If something goes wrong, your source work is still there, very nice capability.

      So I put that in a different proposal. But again, all you have to do is open it. I always switch this off, but you don't have to. And click Start Processing. The software goes ahead and removes the noises.

      And the result looks something like this. If I go to the Point Cloud Team and switch on the classification-- let me make it a little bit bigger. Right there. So this is actually the result, final result, the classification result. And it looks a little bit clumsy, but you can actually see that the software made all the brown points you see. Maybe I should short list that. Give me a second.

      This is everything. You see the walls kind of delineated, trees are different. If you want to focus only on the surface, that's most of the surface points. There are a few noises here, because the terrain is pretty dense, but it actually deleted all of the-- not deleted. It actually flagged or classified all the other noises, kept the surface intact.

      So for a quick surface generation, it really helps. Anyone who messed with a point cloud data, especially on the created contours or something like that, it's very difficult to do this. Otherwise, you have to go through a little bit of a tedious line extraction or something. You grid the data. You have to go through multiple hoops just to get the surface.

      Here you can get it almost instantaneously, automatically. That's a handy tool right there. And we switch this off. I can switch on the surface. It also creates a grid surface, like a raster domain, I can actually use.

      I'm not sure how many of you guys saw the tech review or the keynote. We are working on the contour visualization. Now you can actually start seeing the contour. We already have the contours visualization in InfraWorks. We're making that better. It's going to be really nice, smooth. This is an upcoming release, I believe. That's like in our tools. It's not released yet.

      But if you want to see the contours and stuff, you can do it. If you want to take it to Civil 3D, you can open this SQLLite file in Civil 3D InfraWorks connection. You wanna cover that part?

      ERIC VALLEJO: I'm sorry?

      RAMESH SRIDHARAN: You want to cover that part, right? The Civil 3D part.

      ERIC VALLEJO: Yes

      RAMESH SRIDHARAN: OK. Not yet.

      ERIC VALLEJO: Yeah.

      RAMESH SRIDHARAN: So you can actually open the SQLite file in Civil 3D. The software will bring the terrain up automatically. Or if you want to give the terrain to someone, or say your colleague is working on somewhere, you want to email the search terrain or something like that, you can actually create what we call an IMX file right there. You can actually create the IMX file for the entire model or the specific area.

      It actually creates the terrain in what we call an exchange format-- that's IMX file format-- and email it or put in [? SCP ?] or somewhere. It's pretty small, depending upon your project. And who you're intending to, they can open it in Civil 3D and do their stuff. So very handy, depending upon what you're trying to do, very handy.

      But the cool part here is-- at least in my opinion, the cool part here is that when I get a point cloud project, I can start messing with it and create some contours in a matter of half an hour, 45 minutes, depending upon the size. That makes my job much easier.

      How many of you guys use static LIDAR drone point cloud? Yeah. So drone base point cloud this is very nice to apply. It [INAUDIBLE] the terrain pretty fast and use it-- sometimes, depending upon your drone data, sometimes the courses will be a little bit mushy on the point cloud, so you might see little bit noises, but overall it does a great job on getting the terrain out of it. Any questions on that? Yes sir.

      AUDIENCE: Work with LIDAR data too?

      RAMESH SRIDHARAN: Yes, any point cloud. Yes. Maybe I should point that out. So this too-- that's the cool part about this terrain generation tool, is that the optimum parameter has one more trick up its sleeve. It tries to find out what point cloud it is based on the density and other things. So if it's a airborne or a helicopter-based data, where it's a low density, software automatically changes the parameter to adjust and get the terrain for you. For the mobile and terrestrial, especially on the drone stuff, it has a different set of parameters, so that you can get the best out of it. So it works pretty adaptively with the data.

      And also, I'll be covering mostly on the linear feature part today. But there's a vertical feature which is basically like a extraction of signs and the street lights and things like that. I call it a point feature or a vertical feature. So you have automatic recognition. So it'll actually a group of points, when you see them, maybe-- I'll switch on the point cloud. Switch the point cloud on. Let me make this a little bit bigger so you can see other things.

      Of course, in this data, it's just trees. So there's no point in doing it. But if you have actual infrastructure area, or a site design, any project you do. So all this-- the one that's sticking out there in different color, there is a reason to it, actually. So software tries to group the points together, what software thinks as-- they belong to each other. And then in the point cloud modeling tool, that's somewhere here-- right there-- the point cloud modeling tool will convert that group of points, or recognize a group of points, what it might be.

      Right now we have three main categories. Street life, signs, and trees. We intend to add a lot more to it. But you can customize them. That's very easy way to do it. But idea here is, again, if you have roadway data, for example-- like a small project, like a 10 miles, 15 miles, small is a relative term, but it's up to you guys-- but any project, you can actually go through this tool. It'll take you to each and every point feature.

      You don't have to pan around and zoom in and check it. Software will actually take you from one after the other. All as a user you have to do is, did you recognize, yes or no? That's it. And it'll put a 3D model off of it, and lot of stuff happens there. So the point cloud modeling is one of the cool feature, especially who is interested in the city assets, city furniture, kind of extraction, or in design terms, [INAUDIBLE] kind of information, like manholes, fire hydrants, you want to know for your Civil 3D design, you can get them and export as the 3D point shape file. It feeds right into Civil 3D. Very nice tool.

      All right, coming back to the linear features-- I'm good on time?

      ERIC VALLEJO: Yeah.

      RAMESH SRIDHARAN: Perfect.

      ERIC VALLEJO: Killing it.

      RAMESH SRIDHARAN: So the linear features part-- like I said, I am a little bit of a lazy guy. I like to extract things automatically. But this particular project, it's very hard to extract automatic, because the-- let me-- I'm just trying to highlight-- OK. Actually, let me go here. I'll go back to show you-- this is a little bit better. The color coding helps to see the wall.

      So he wants the top of the wall. And so this is the wall-- this is fence, right?

      ERIC VALLEJO: Yep, top of the fence. Top of the wall. Base of the wall.

      RAMESH SRIDHARAN: I never understood why you wanted top of the fence. That's not a break line.

      ERIC VALLEJO: I just-- just was seeing if you can do it.

      RAMESH SRIDHARAN: So if you wanted top of the fence. And either edges of the wall. And this was a tricky one-- one to get kind of this-- the wall extends, actually. That here-- the wall begins here, and soon the brown is here, so the it looks like a small wall. But it goes all the way deeper and deeper. So that edge as well. So it's not the consistent elevation offset. And there's no pattern to it also.

      So it has to be extracted manual way, one way or the other. And so what I did is, extracted-- came up with a poly line, like in this case you can actually see-- Oh, by the-- before we want to do that, let me show you that the way you will draw lines [INAUDIBLE]-- I think that's something you guys would be interested in.

      There are two ways to do it. The one thing called linear feature extraction, automating when you switch it off-- that's what I did for this project. The initial one. Automatic is pretty simple. You just click, click, you know the drill. Double-click, you get a 3D poly lines. I can't show the automatic one here-- where is the linear features again? But the automatic is kind of cool, especially when you're working on the road-based area-- like a-- it's a infrastructure, like we [INAUDIBLE] for the transportation purposes.

      So paint stripes or the top of curve or the bottom of the curve-- anything. You just-- all you have to do is this-- pick that desired feature code. We have a lot of [INAUDIBLE] here, you can customize it. And then give first two words vertices. Just look at the canvas, draw first two vertices. Software takes few seconds to elongate that. Depending upon how long the data goes, it creates a 3D poly line for you.

      I was talking to a customer on the first day, he said he was working on a-- in UK he was working on a 10 kilometer project. One shot, he got the paint stripes, everything from the 10 kilometer project. He brought in the whole [? RCS ?] file here, he got it done. In a half an hour, the project is done-- paint stripe, edge of pavement, paint stripe, and everything on a highly. Really cool to hear, actually.

      So very efficient tool. Check it out. I have a session at 2:15 this afternoon. I may go a little bit-- go detail on that part if you guys are interested. I've got to promote it. So that's the linear feature part. So you can actually draw the lines. It's actual 3D poly lines. And are lot of-- you can edit them. Not like a Civil 3D. We're not competing with Civil 3d here. But it has some very cool features. You can edit the vertices and all those stuff. It always snaps to the surface, whatever surface you have. Helps a lot, actually.

      Just a fun fact on that, one other project we're working with a different customer, he used-- he wanted a rough edges of the roads and everything from the-- different side project area. Take it to Civil 3D for some analysis purposes, he went to the model builder, got the stuff, and extracted the line, and then took it into Civil 3D. He got it done, actually. So once you have the surface, the data will snap to it. It was-- I never expected that as a workflow I would do. But he was pretty happy with it. So a lot of ways to do it, make use of the tool. That's all I'm saying.

      And this one I really like. So we have the line. I can go into cross-section. The cross-section is really, really handy, especially for this project. So you can actually see right there a little color combinations, a little odd. But-- so there is my-- let me go back. All right, so those are my two-- the walls. And in this project, I used a fence line. Actually, fence line helped me.

      Because that's-- if there's something consistent in this data set, that's the top of the fence. So I used that actually-- because I need to have some I anchor point. Without a baseline, there's no way I can do a cross-section. I can wing it, I can just keep creating the cross-section of different aspects of it. Then my lines are not going to look good. So it's a very delicate thing to do.

      So I thought, I want one concrete base line to work with. And I used a fence top for that matter. So I first went ahead and extracted complete fence. That's what you see in here. You can see that, and all the stuff. And then once they have that fence, that happens to be the baseline, then I can come here, and I can start extracting these too. I actually extracted all this [INAUDIBLE] in one shot.

      You can actually-- like for example, you can extract this-- click, click, click, click-- and I can actually group them in the upcoming releast, not the existing-- In two weeks or something, we have a new release. There you can group them. A safe harbor. So here now you can actually group them. And if you want to move something, you just move one, everything moves automatically.

      And you can zoom in, up, up, up. Obviously you don't want that. You can do that-- if you want to make adjustment to a specific vertex, just click one more time. And you see the dotted line that only that vertex will move. But it still holds onto all the grouping capabilities. So very handy to create a 3D poly line here. Then I went ahead with the next vertex. The next vertex, I can create it.

      And if you want to add a new line-- I don't think we need to add a new line here. But just for fun part, if I want out of vertex for middle of the fence or something, add vertex, I can pick-- I'll pick-- I used all these things already. I don't want to mess it up. All right. So right there, that's the line, that's the vertex, and then I keep moving. Oops.

      Hold on. I'm actually all the way in the other end. Let me get back to the other end. That's where it starts. Show cross-section, there you go, 0, 0. And now-- when I told you guys this data was kind of weird. I wasn't lying. So you can actually see that when you move forward with this, the cross-section makes it much easier, obviously.

      But you can see the fence suddenly turns-- it has a curved edge to it, because there's a, like a easel or something. I don't know.

      ERIC VALLEJO: No, it's old. It's old and busted. It's a--

      RAMESH SRIDHARAN: Really great job.

      ERIC VALLEJO: It's a chain link fence, it's just leaning over.

      RAMESH SRIDHARAN: But you get the idea. So I can actually extract the vert-- let me just create one fake one just to get my point across. And what I was trying to show you guys before was, when you can do that, and when you add lines, the cross-section keeps updating. In this screen, everything kind of zoomed in. In your monitors it'll look pretty nice.

      And you can actually see the line getting created instantaneously. That's the line I just put in. And you can put this in a separate window. And one tidbit on that-- this is a static LIDAR data. If you're working on different types of LIDAR, and you might collect some camera images with it, like a mobile LIDAR images, we added a tool called point cloud image look up.

      He has everything because he's working on the sandbox version. It's coming up in the product release. Very handy tool. All you have to give is the log file of your image collection. Every time you move on the cross-section, the image will automatically update it for you. So you know exactly what you're looking at when you're making some decision. Very handy.

      It works very nice on the point features. I really like it. Because when I'm extracting signs or the trees or something, I would like to have some attributes to it. What sign it is-- you know, I'm collecting one, so let's make it better. So the attribute information comes very handy after you collect the data. An image helps a lot on that.

      In this case, it doesn't matter. Because everything is going to look green tree anyways. What's the point? That's all we extracted. That's all we extract. This took about like 10 or 15 minutes for me to do. I used that as a baseline. I created this one. I was trying to be a little bit picky on that part, to make sure my vertices line up with the point cloud.

      I went through multiple times. Every I saw this, I couldn't get it out of my head. The lines are not smooth, but I should understand the terrain is not smooth, also. But I tried my best to get a part of it. But then I extracted about-- it took about 45 minutes to extract this and export it and give it to him. And I'm a developer, right? So I'm kind of feeling bad. It took 45 minutes for me to do this project. It shouldn't-- it's a very small project.

      So I called one on my friends, who actually uses Civil 3D and other products, actually, the competing products, to do line extractions like that. I sent him a screenshot, whatever I sent him, and he said, for this type of project, if you want to [INAUDIBLE] someone, it would take about half a day to do it, because of just the severity of it. The cross-sections is a main thing, and extracting a 3D poly lines, and cubic using it-- all will add up to about 4 to 5 hours. That doesn't include a point cloud preparation or anything like that. So I was personally happy with it. 45 minutes is not that bad. But we will work on shrinking that time even further as we move forward.

      So that's what I did. The line work-- I talked about the point features. Yeah, then the export. So we have a very nice export option. I told you how you can get the IMX files surface to Civil 3D. That's one way of doing it. When I talk to the customers, some people like to get hands on the point cloud itself. Why should I get [INAUDIBLE] data, or the terrain or something, from InfraWorks, when I have the point cloud with myself. So you can export that also.

      So we added this export point cloud extraction, where you can export the points as a RCS file. You take it to Civil 3D. There's a command called create surface from point cloud. Very easy tool. You click to-- two clicks, you can get the surface. The really nice part is, since you already prepared the-- the point cloud terrain did the job, you don't have to filter anything in Civil 3D. You will have the option to take out noise, as you can say , no filter. Press OK, you'll get the surface like-- for this one, it took like a minute or so. But easy.

      And all the other features you collect-- I of course extracted or exported only linear features for this. But everything you do it-- you can specify the file format you want. We right now do Shapefile and CSV. And the cool part-- the target coordinate system, that's one thing-- every time I talk with the InfraWorks customers and the Civil 3D customers, says the coordinate system is a big thing. When I bring it in, it should lie where it's supposed to.

      So we added that part-- [INAUDIBLE] very meticulous on that. Then working on transportation, we have to. So now you can specify the target coordinate system. So any features you extract from point cloud, which is these three, will be reprojected automatically to that coordinate system, so if you take it to existing drawing, which is your desired coordinate system, everything should line up. So you don't have to do-- you're not worried about anything. That includes x, y, and z, by the way.

      That's it, actually. You export it, it comes as the shapefile. I'm sure if I ask you guys for feedback, you [INAUDIBLE] why not DWG file? We are working on it. The Shapefile was handy because GIS customers wanted, and everything. So we [INAUDIBLE] with it. And it works very well with working closely with ESRI as well, like you guys know. All right, I think that's what I did. I gave the file to him.

      ERIC VALLEJO: Yeah. Awesome.

      RAMESH SRIDHARAN: Do your magic.

      ERIC VALLEJO: ESRI-- Esri-- it's Esri now, right?

      RAMESH SRIDHARAN: Yep.

      ERIC VALLEJO: So again, yeah-- so InfraWorks-- obviously the moneymaker with that is extracting this line work and then getting a surface. And then of course there's other features with InfraWorks-- he's got a class at 2:00. 2:00? 2:15. And then he's got a flight at 5:00. Which is crazy.

      So yeah-- so again, with processing line work with scanner data, obviously, this is a huge help to us-- just big time saver as far as generating some of the-- I mean, it's obviously we're just generating just simple line work. But to actually do that with a large amount of point cloud data, InfraWorks really makes our lives easier in that regards.

      So again, he exports out these surface-- he exports out a surface. You can export out this line work. And then the next step is basically just to bring it into Civil 3D. So a couple different options here. There we go. So this is actually the surface that we exported, or we imported in from InfraWorks here.

      Basically the process with that-- obviously first and foremost is your coordinate system, and making sure that's all set up. And that's going to be throughout the entire process-- taking it from Trimble-- well, for us taking it from Trimble into ReCap into InfraWorks, into Civil 3D. It's very important that you be consistent with-- and be conscious and aware of what coordinate system and zone you're in. Because obviously that's going to make a huge difference in where this data ends up.

      So with InfraWorks, as far as bringing in data from it, again, it's real simple. If you use the ribbon up here, the Import tab, you basically can just browse out as far as the surface goes. That's our import file here. If I click Open, and then hit Open Model, it automatically builds this surface for us. And then as far as this line work goes-- so this is the line work that he generated from our InfraWorks model-- that process is going to be-- well, I've got the map.

      It's basically the map import option, or command. And then we just bring in that shapefile. So if you guys are familiar with GIS, you know shape files. Again, that's kind of-- that's going to be another place where you need to be conscious and aware of your coordinate system and zone. But by importing this data, or that shapefile you extracted from InfraWorks, it brings in this Civil 3D-- or this 3D poly line to that line work.

      So straight from InfraWorks and into Civil 3D here. Let me turn this off here. Just kind of show you what the product is here. I use object viewer all the time. But this is what it kind of looks like in Civil 3D here. So you can see-- there's the top of the fence there. There's the top of our wall. The base of our wall on the pavement side. And then you can kind of see this yellow line down here, which is, if you look at the backside here, that's the toe of the bank. So again, not only will we use it for line work to visually see in a plan view where are our features are, but we'll also use that as brake lines to finish off this surface.

      So once we kind of bring it in, the next step, again, we then combine it with our traditional survey. Just turn this to-- I'll just turn this to [INAUDIBLE]. So we bring in that point cloud. Yeah, so we can bring in that surface data. Also, too, and actually part of the handout-- another thing I did-- actually, what the handout says, and what I articulate in the handout is actually instead of bringing in the surface from InfraWorks, I actually brought in the point cloud, which is the RCS file.

      And same deal-- to insert that point cloud straight from ReCap, right? Attach. You basically just browse out. And you just hit that insert point cloud. You bring it straight in from ReCap here. So that's our RCP file. You open it up, and it actually puts that point cloud inside that data, too. So that's another avenue that you can take to get that data.

      So a few different ways to kind of do what you need to do depending on what your project is. But again, you could see this project-- you've got traditional survey out here. There's a building here. And then we just kind of combined it together here. And then from there, it's just-- obviously you have to do a little bit of cleanup and what-not to finish this thing off. But again, once you kind of get it looking the way you want it here to, clean it up, and then-- [INAUDIBLE]. Let's see here. Can't see that.

      So on 3D orbit here, you can see there's the top of our wall here. There's our bank. And then over here, you can kind of see-- we added that-- I added that point cloud data in here. You can kind of see the surface where that's pasted in and such there.

      AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

      ERIC VALLEJO: So what I did, what we typically do, is I will paste a surface-- so I'll have two separate surfaces. So I'll have a surface generated straight from just the point cloud. And then I'll create another existing surface, I'll paste that surface in. And then do my cleanup on top of that. I do kind of like to keep it separate, just because I want to-- I'd like to keep the data that-- I want to keep, if there's a piece of data that's coming from one source, I kind of like to keep that pristine and on it, so in that way I can edit just that piece of data and I know where it's coming from, if that makes sense.

      But yeah, you can see our point cloud here. And then obviously I use these for break lines within building my surface. Yes, sir.

      AUDIENCE: What do you use to determine how many [INAUDIBLE]?

      ERIC VALLEJO: For scanning? I mean, every project's going to be different. So obviously you just, depending on what your visual, what your line of sight is going to be-- again, for this project, we were able to do it in-- or for just this retaining wall, we were able to just do it in three scans. But that's kind of something that we assess when we get out to the field.

      We might go-- obviously go see the site until we get out there and see it. It's kind of hard to tell. But of course, we set up a traditional survey control. It's the same as setting up traditional survey control, where you go out in the field, figure it out, set a control point, and in the best possible place that you can to get cover the most area. So it's just-- yeah, it just depends.

      AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

      ERIC VALLEJO: Yeah, and obviously you have to be able to see what you're scanning to make sure you get that data. So just project dependent.

      AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

      RAMESH SRIDHARAN: Yes, sir. Oh, sorry.

      AUDIENCE: Did you know right away [INAUDIBLE]?

      ERIC VALLEJO: Typically-- I mean, yeah, yeah, of course. When you're going out to the project site, when you're going out to the work site, you definitely want to be prepared for any challenges that might come up, of course. The first time that they might visit the site, it might be with their survey equipment. So luckily our guys are-- we've got a lot of experience in our survey crews, for-- our survey crew has a lot of experience. So when they get out there, they walk the site, they figure it out. But it'd be the same as scanning inside of a building, or any other-- collecting any other data.

      AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] They can look at the [INAUDIBLE].

      ERIC VALLEJO: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So yeah, John works with us. He actually helps out with our survey department. But basically one point he was saying is they do have a tablet with their scanners. So once they make that scan-- I guess, yeah, if that answers your question too. So once they make a scan, they can look and see, OK.

      AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

      ERIC VALLEJO: Exactly, yeah. They're--

      AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

      ERIC VALLEJO: Yeah, yeah. Sorry, I misunderstood your question. Yes. But yes, they can visualize it outside in the field and assess, OK, we need to get an additional setup, or looks like we got everything, we're good.

      AUDIENCE: I guess my question's kind of a piggyback to this, and it's regarding control-- are you guys often resecting, or are you doing typical [INAUDIBLE]? [INAUDIBLE] false registration, or is it all happening [INAUDIBLE].

      AUDIENCE: Did you try to use the further backside [INAUDIBLE].

      AUDIENCE: So it's really using traditional survey methods.

      ERIC VALLEJO: Yeah, correct. Yeah, so--

      AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

      AUDIENCE: Are you getting your coverage on [INAUDIBLE] scan in this scenario? Or you have to do more than [INAUDIBLE]?

      AUDIENCE: Yeah, that's all [INAUDIBLE].

      ERIC VALLEJO: So yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah. Again, because of the equipment we have, we do use traditional surveys. So we do have that control out there already. So scanning it makes it just a lot easier to set up and go, because you know where you're at.

      AUDIENCE: You're not adding additional targets with [INAUDIBLE]--

      ERIC VALLEJO: For this we didn't, but in some cases you might.

      AUDIENCE: Thank you.

      ERIC VALLEJO: Yeah.

      AUDIENCE: Because here your scan was a whole lot easier than [INAUDIBLE].

      ERIC VALLEJO: Exactly, yeah.

      AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] more control [INAUDIBLE] depending on how the details [INAUDIBLE].

      AUDIENCE: So probably in this complex environment of doing it in the truly traditional way, measurement after measurement after measurement and [INAUDIBLE] you guys feel that you're way ahead of the game [INAUDIBLE].

      ERIC VALLEJO: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. 100%. Yes, sir.

      AUDIENCE: What determines the design [INAUDIBLE] for you guys from surveying that and [INAUDIBLE]?

      ERIC VALLEJO: Yep. So-- yeah, so that's a good question. So he's asking what determines whether you need a scan or not, right? So for this particular instance-- again, we started this with just a traditional survey. That was the mindset kind of going in. But because we had the scanner-- again, this is a pretty high wall fence. And then part of this project was actually assessing that wall and seeing structurally if it was OK, or what needed to be repaired, or if it needs to be replaced.

      Once they kind of got out there and seen how tall the wall was-- again, we scanned it for safety concerns for our survey crew. And then obviously to save some time because just from the bottom side of things, getting that entire wall, scanning that entire wall, being able to visualize some of those cracks and some of the structural deficiencies within that-- it just made sense, basically. Any other questions? Yes, sir.

      AUDIENCE: We did some specifications and [INAUDIBLE].

      RAMESH SRIDHARAN: Say it one more time? Sorry.

      ERIC VALLEJO: Classification.

      RAMESH SRIDHARAN: Classification better than what?

      AUDIENCE: Because it would be better to do any [INAUDIBLE] in ReCap [INAUDIBLE]?

      RAMESH SRIDHARAN: Got it. So the ReCap cleanups are a little bit simpler ones, like how you are showing you can clip them, maybe if there's the high noise or something. You can clip them, things like that. But in practical cases, if your terrain floating, it's very hard for you to clean it up there. And it's completely manual.

      The classification, on the other hand, it's completely automatic. It adapts to the terrain change. It's not like just a z clipping or anything. So it actually tries to find the terrain. That's the whole idea of it. So in that perspective, I would say, go with the classification. You don't have to hand clip or things like-- that's not-- [INAUDIBLE] time consuming work.

      ERIC VALLEJO: Yep. So Ramesh is always going to tell you to use InfraWorks. But yeah, no, there's-- like I said, there's multiple ways you can process the data. What's up?

      AUDIENCE: So I've had a request to use individual point clouds that have the power lines [INAUDIBLE] not classified. Can you just export out of InfraWorks those features by themselves, or do you have to do another step?

      RAMESH SRIDHARAN: Individual power line points?

      AUDIENCE: Yeah, like the points-- they want the point cloud, but they just want all the power lines.

      RAMESH SRIDHARAN: Yep yep, To go into PLS-CADD or something. OK. You can export. So if you have the lines, you want a point cloud itself for each of them. Yes, the RCS is already classified point cloud data. And maybe I can show real quick. So not this. This expert won't give you-- this will give only the ground points. This is not what you want.

      What you actually want is-- there are two ways to do it. One is, when you're doing the terrain generation, there's a option called export process 12. And I always choose the Do Not Export-- specifically for these kind of cases I left it open there. So you can choose all points-- that will include your power line points also. But it's going to have ground and the power line all those points. You have to take it in.

      The other way of doing it is the same RC-- if you miss it here, the RCS files are stored in the InfraWorks folder. You can take it from there. But they are already classified. So if you want to put some specific power line or something out, you can use the class numbers to do that.

      AUDIENCE: OK.

      RAMESH SRIDHARAN: Yeah. But this was not designed for that kind of application. So we didn't have the point cloud export in that format yet. But you have those capabilities in-built there.

      ERIC VALLEJO: [INAUDIBLE] Sweet. So yeah, any other questions? This is-- so that's pretty much it. That's the show there. But yeah, any more questions? Yeah, of course, you guys have my email address. You got Ramesh's contact information too, so feel free to get a hold of us if you have any questions, or you want some more information. Awesome, thanks for coming guys.

      [APPLAUSE]

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