- Terrasolid, a company based in Finland is a leader in the processing of aerial LiDAR data.
- They have 2 products that are point cloud aware and run inside of Microstation.
- This does offer the possibility of not having to model the data prior to moving it into the CAD design environment.
I received an email from Mika Salolahti with Terrrasolid, one of the leading software products for processing aerial LiDAR data. The company is based in Finland, and has 2 resellers in the US – Leica Geosystems and GeoCue. Actually ERDAS is the distributor of this product in the US.
Mika agrees with the idea of not having to model and pointed out that Terrasolid already permits the use of point clouds directly in a CAD design software, namely Microstation. TerraScan Viewer and TerraPhoto Viewer are already point cloud aware. The cost of the software is 390 Euro, but that does not include Microstation, and also assumes that this is the design software that you prefer. For existing Microstation users it is certainly something that should be considered.
As with the other major players, Bentley does not seem to be very interested in the direct integration of point clouds with their design software environments. I suppose on the one hand that the demand is just not there, or I would think it would receive a higher priority.
Bentley has an extension called CloudWorks which views lidar points within Microstation from a Leica Cyclone database, though I haven’t used it much beyond viewing a cloud. It does have some processing options (basic plane fitting etc) but wouldn’t be a substitution for terrascan.
I think you can obtain a trial version