Upload Drone Scans (.las/.laz/.e57)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Overview of Drone Scans
• Restrictions
• Uploading Drone Scans Using Cintoo Connect
• Processing Time for Drone Scans Using Cintoo Connect 

Overview of Drone Scans

Photos shot with a drone and processed using photogrammetry solutions such as Pix4D or Drone Deploy produce an ‘unstructured’ colored point cloud. Uploading this resulting unstructured point cloud in Cintoo requires the installation and use of Cintoo Connect. For instructions to install the latest Cintoo Connect version, see this article: Installing Cintoo Connect

Cintoo Connect will then process this unstructured point cloud and ‘restructure’ it automatically.

• ‘Restructuring’ means that Cintoo Connect will create 3D Virtual Vantage Points (VVPs) as if your drone data was coming from a ‘flying’ tripod-mounted static scanners, thus facilitating the navigation experience.
• The resolution of those newly created 3D VVPs is computed automatically based on the resolution of your source unstructured point cloud.
• There is no compromise on point cloud accuracy or density when using this process.
• Each of those newly created 3D VVPs will count as one scan in your scan capacity.
• You may download and export your newly created 3D VVPs from Cintoo Cloud as a unified or structured point cloud as you would do with your static scan data.
• You may of course merge static scans, mobile scans and VVPs in Cintoo Cloud and navigate between them as long as they share the same coordinate system.

Restrictions

Cintoo Connect supports the following drone data:

• Point cloud in LAS, LAZ, or E57 file format
• Point cloud must cover a minimum projected ground surface area of at least 400 square meters
• Point cloud density must be higher than 250 points per square meter (= 23 points per square foot, or 1 point per 6.25cm (2.46in).
  • (i.e. total number of points divided by the projected ground surface area)
    
• Horizontal flights only, that can be at various altitudes
  • Not covered: vertical flights along building facades or electric towers for example

• If the point cloud is georeferenced, the point cloud file must have a pose.
• The point cloud file must contain only one point cloud.
• For linear infrastructure, each project must be smaller than 10 kilometers or 6.2 miles (= distance between the most extreme points of the project). Recommendation: If the project is larger than 10 km, it is recommended that you split your source point cloud in smaller chunks. You can then process each chunk with a separate Cintoo Connect instance that can run in parallel on your computer and import each chunk in a separate project.

Uploading Drone Scans Using Cintoo Connect

1. Open the Cintoo project to the DATA tab, and click "Prepare & upload" on the "Drone" tile, or click "Upload drone" from the drop-down menu. Cintoo Connect will launch. 

2. From the "Drone Scans" tab in Cintoo Connect, click the ellipsis to select the E57, LAS, or LAZ file as input for Point Cloud.

3. Modify the distance between virtual vantage points as needed.

• The distance between virtual vantage points setting will determine the estimated number of VVPs to generate, which will be indicated in Cintoo Connect and will be added to your scan count.

4. Modify the "Data to process in parallel" value as needed.

• You may process more than 2 scans (default setting) in parallel if you have a multi-core PC.

• On average, you will need at least 400 MB of RAM per 10 million pixels to process For example: 
  • 8 GB of RAM will allow you to process 5 scans of 40 million pixels each in parallel.
  • 64 GB of RAM will be needed to process 5 scans of 160 million pixels each in parallel.

5. Click "Import."

• Check the ‘Messages’ tab from time to time to see if the process is running smoothly.
• Your new 3D VVPs will appear one by one in your Cintoo Cloud project.

Processing Time for Drone Scans Using Cintoo Connect 

The information below is given for reference and may vary depending on the capacity of your Windows-based computer running Cintoo Connect. Please check this section for desktop or laptop hardware recommendations.

Processing times and number of Virtual Vantage Points generated are estimated and may vary depending on your point cloud density as well. In the tables below, 2 point cloud densities are given as examples: 250 points per square meter (= 23 points per square foot) and 2,500 points per square meter (= 230 points per square foot):

Recommendation: If the area to process is very large and if you want to speed up your processing time, it is recommended that you split your source point cloud into smaller chunks. You can then process each chunk with a separate Cintoo Connect instance that can run in parallel on your computer.