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Leica MS60 Point Clouds
Anyone out there use the Leica MS60 multistation? We’ve started working in scanning into our workflow using the MS60, but classifying the point cloud doesn’t seem to be something that Leica decided to include in the Infinity point cloud module. Does Leica expect you purchase Cyclone just to classify the point clouds? Seems like something that could (should) be done within Infinity, no? I guess I wanted to see what other surveyors workflows looked like for using the MS60. Our plan now is to do traditional topo with the total station and include scans on each control point we set up on for additional details, but the office processing seems like it’ll be overwhelming if we can’t at least get a classified point cloud to start with.
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3 Replies
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Personally, I hardly ever classify point clouds. That is not a particularly common thing in terrestrial scanning, especially with the small and usually targeted clouds from the MS60.
In my experience, Cyclone is rarely used for classifying point clouds. I’m not even sure those tools are in any version of Cyclone. The main software that does that sort of process are things like 3DR and CloudCompare.
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Personally, I hardly ever classify point clouds. That is not a particularly common thing in terrestrial scanning, especially with the small and usually targeted clouds from the MS60.
Maybe this is a regional thing, but I would always classify my point clouds when working with SX10/12 scan data. Made it far easier to extract point and line features. TBC does a pretty bang-up job for a software program that’s not exclusively scan-oriented.
At the very least I needed to extract the ground region so I could sample it and kick it out to a base surface file. But it also made it a lot easier to draw & extract catenaries/overhead lines, poles, trees, breaklines, etc. as well pull out relevant building facades, etc. that we might send over to the designers/architects.
I’m a bit surprised that it’s not an option in Infinity…but not too surprised. I dove into it for two years straight and could never get the functionality that I got with TBC.
“…people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.” -Neil Postman -
That’s about the gist of what we’re looking for as well. Some sort of feature extraction possibilities and the ability to extract points for a ground surface based on classification data. Infinity has point cloud de-densification options, some basic cleanup, clipping, etc. but nothing for classification. Hopefully scanning/drone data will become popular enough with future surveyors that it’ll be understood that it’s part of the workflow and added into Infinity.
Seems like they’re going the same route as Autodesk: “Oh, you wanted to actually USE that data you captured? Well, here’s this nifty program here that’ll get you one step closer to what you’d like. Just jump through a few of these hoops here, create a triplicate file of the point cloud in a completely useless file format there and….wait, what were you trying to do?”
Leica Cyclone with 3DR seems to be the classification module and there’s a separate Cyclone Survey module for feature extraction. I’ve enjoyed using Virtual Surveyor for feature extraction, but it’s not as clear-cut with point clouds since they turn all imported data into a DSM, losing quite a bit of sharp vertical relief in the process. I’ve enjoyed how easy it is for working with drone data which already comes in as a classified point cloud with a orthomosaic ties to it.
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