Reprojection

Exercise

This exercise uses PDAL to reproject ASPRS LAS data

Issue the following command in your Docker Quickstart Terminal.

docker run -v /c/Users/Howard/PDAL:/data -t pdal/pdal \
    pdal translate /data/exercises/analysis/ground/CSite1_orig-utm.laz \
    /data/exercises/translation/csite-dd.laz \
    reprojection \
    --filters.reprojection.out_srs="EPSG:4326"

Unfortunately this doesn’t produce the intended results for us. Issue the following pdal info command to see why:

docker run -v /c/Users/Howard/PDAL:/data -t pdal/pdal \
    pdal info /data/exercises/translation/csite-dd.laz --all

Some formats, like writers.las do not automatically set scaling information. PDAL cannot really do this for you because there are a number of ways to trip up. For latitude/longitude data, you will need to set the scale to smaller values like 0.0000001. Additionally, LAS uses an offset value to move the origin of the value. Use PDAL to set that to auto so you don’t have to compute it.

docker run -v /c/Users/Howard/PDAL:/data -t pdal/pdal \
    pdal translate \
    /data/exercises/analysis/ground/CSite1_orig-utm.laz \
    /data/exercises/translation/csite-dd.laz \
    reprojection \
    --filters.reprojection.out_srs="EPSG:4326" \
    --writers.las.scale_x=0.0000001 \
    --writers.las.scale_y=0.0000001 \
    --writers.las.offset_x="auto" \
    --writers.las.offset_y="auto"

Run the pdal info command again to verify the X, Y, and Z dimensions:

Notes

1. filters.reprojection will use whatever coordinate system is defined by the point cloud file, but you can override it using the in_srs option. This is useful in situations where the coordinate system is not correct, not completely specified, or your system doesn’t have all of the required supporting coordinate system dictionaries.
2. PDAL uses proj.4 library for reprojection. This library includes the capability to do both vertical and horizontal datum transformations.