I. Background

Mach9’s Digital Surveyor uses mobile LiDAR point cloud, trajectory and the associated 360 degree and/or planar images to perform automated feature extraction to create CAD/GIS outputs.

Commercial mobile LiDAR systems like Leica Pegasus: Two Ultimate or Leica Pegasus TRK collect all of the data needed for this process. This document provides detailed instructions for using the Pegasus Manager to export all the data necessary for Mach9 to perform automated feature extraction.

II. Procedure

Step 1: Preparation

Prior to exporting data, be sure your trajectory is processed and cameras are well calibrated. Colorization of the point cloud is optional and only used as a visualization mode on Digital Surveyor.

Next, create a target export folder with three subfolders on your system named as follows (the folder names are case sensitive):

The export folder name can be arbitrary, in this case we named it “Project Export”.

Step 2: Exporting Data

First, make sure that the coordinate system is set to the project coordinate system and units used while collecting. These options can be found under the “Coordinate system” tab of the settings window.

CPO requires loading of a WKT string to export coordinate system information with your LAS files. It is required to load a WKT string of your project coordinate system prior to exporting your data. You can download a WKT string at https://spatialreference.org/. After navigating to your project coordinate system, download the “OGC WKT” file and add it to your CPO project.

Next, select the “Finalize and Export” tab and set the settings as shown below. Be sure to set the LAS version to 1.4. Then click “Apply” to close the window.

Then navigate to the “Finalize and Export” tab of the main project view and set the finalization and export options as shown below. Click “Finalize” to begin the export process.

Step 3: Moving Files

Once the export process has completed, navigate to your Cyclone Pegasus Office project folder and open up the “Export” folder. You should see the following folders within it.

First enter the “JPEG” folder. We are only extracting data related to spherical images from this folder. The best way to do this is to search “sphere” in the file explorer search bar. Once the search has completed, select all of the files using “Ctrl+a” and copy them over the “pano_leica” folder created in Step 1.

Next, copy all of the .las files from the “LAS” folder into the “laser” folder from Step 1. Then copy all of the Track folders from the “Undistored_images” folder into the “topodot” folder from Step 1. These files can be found within the project specific folder inside of the “Undistored_images” folder as shown below.

Step 4: Verify Output Structure

A properly exported dataset should resemble the following directory structure (bold: folder):

Project Export
├── laser
│   ├── Track_A_20220125_184016 1Profiler.zfs_0.las
│   ├── Track_A_20220125_184016 1Profiler.zfs_1.las
│   ├── Track_A_20220125_184016 1Profiler.zfs_2.las
│   ├── Track_A_20220125_184016 1Profiler.zfs_3.las
│   ├── Track_A_20220125_184016 1Profiler.zfs_4.las
│   └── Track_A_20220125_184016 1Profiler.zfs_5.las
├── pano_leica
│   └── Track_ASphere [315 entries]
└── topodot
		└── Track_AUNDST [1245 entries]

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Again, make sure the “laser”, “topodot”, “pano_leica” folders are named correctly with all lowercase characters.

Step 5: Compression

Create a new upload folder to store the zipped files into. This folder should only contain the zipped files to be uploaded.

We ask that you compress the export folders and their contents into split compressed files no more than 10 GB each. You can use any of the following formats:

.tar.gz (gzip compressed tarball)

.tar.xz (LZMA compressed tarball)

.zip

Not every compression tool will create split archives. One free software we use for this is 7-zip. It is available at www.7-zip.org. This video (credit to GEEKrar Guides) walks you through the entire process of using 7-zip to create split archives.

Right click the export folder and click 7-Zip > Add to archive…

Configure the export setting as shown below:

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Be sure to set split volumes to “DVD DL” and set the archive location to a separate upload folder from the zipped export folder.

Step 6: Upload

Navigate to your target upload folder and select Upload > Mobile LiDAR data

Input a name for your dataset and then select Generic Topodot from the dropdown menu. Add your email to be notified when uploading is complete.

Click Chose files and use multiselect to chose all the zip files to upload.

Verify your uploaded files and click Upload

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After uploading be sure to not close the tab or let the computer go to sleep. This will interrupt the upload.

III. Support

If you need any help during this process, please contact Mach9 Customer Support at customersupport@mach9.io.

Leica MMS