Start a project

The first step in VisionLidar is to create a project and import point clouds by opening the "File / New / Quick project" or "File / New / Project" tool. The project must first be named and a project location must be set. The "Quick project" option run inside VisionLidar, closing an already opened project and takes the other parameters that are already in VisionLidar settings while the "Project" option shows you every parameters and run outside of VisionLidar allowing multiple project creations to be done simultaneously while still working on another project.

The source files can be fetched by clicking the “...” button and selecting valid point cloud files. Many formats are available as source data: .LAS, .LAZ, .E57, .PTS, .CSV .X3A, .FLS, .LSPROJ or .RCP. It’s important to note that while it's possible to add scans after the project creation, the scan files can only be added one at a time. It's therefore preferable to add all pertinent files upon creation of the project. If the source files contain spherical images, they will be extracted and accessible in View / Spherical images 

Source files can be chosen separately within one folder or the option "All in folder" will let the user takes all scan files of the chosen formats within that folder and its sub folder if wanted. Only 255 scans can be imported independently in one project, if more scans are needed, they must be merge together in one big point cloud, thus losing the origin of a point, with the option "Merge scans". "Keep temporary files" allows to keep the .laz files resulting of the conversions made before creating the project, thus being in the project's coordinate system.

A VisionLidar project is managed by a cubic tiling system. The point cloud data is therefore divided into sub groups to ease the processing of large volumes of data. It is possible to specify the size of the tiles (“Tile size”) or the maximum number of points a tile should contain (“Max. points in tile”). The dimension of the tiles will have an impact on data processing speeds and display fluidity. By default, the maximum number of points per tile is 5000. Increasing this value will create larger tiles, increasing the number of points viewed at a time while slowing down visualization, especially for slower computers. Decreasing this value will create smaller tiles, displaying less points at a time while enhancing fluidity. The tile size cannot be changed after project creation. It is recommended to have a tile size of at least 1.5 so that the most detailed view appears within an acceptable range.