Text to LAS Tool

Text To Las

The Text To Las tool converts LIDAR data from a standard ASCII format into the more efficient binary LAS and LAZ formats.

Input Parameters

• Text file to process – An ASCII file containing LIDAR data.
• Parse string – Indicates how to parse the file. See #Parse Strings below for more details.

Output Parameters

• Output file – Where to write the output file to.

Parse Strings

Text To Las is intelligent enough to handle common field separators inside a text file, but it needs to know what the resulting numbers mean. Parse strings provide that information.

An example parse string: xyzt

This indicates that the first field on each line is the X coordinate of a point, the second field is the Y coordinate, the third is the Z coordinate, and the fourth is the GPS time. Any other fields are discarded.

Other supported characters are:

• a – Scan angle.
• B – Blue channel of RGB color.
• c – Classification.
• d – Direction of scan flag.
• e – Edge of flight line flag.
• g – Synthetic flag.
• G – Green channel of RGB color.
• h – Withheld flag.
• i – Intensity.
• I – NIR channel.
• k – Keypoint flag.
• l – Scanner channel.
• n – Number of returns of given pulse.
• o – Overlap flag.
• p – Point source ID.
• r – Return number.
• R – Red channel of RGB color.
• s – Number should be skipped.
• t – GPS time.
• u – User data.
• x – X coordinate of the point.
• y – Y coordinate of the point.
• z – Z coordinate of the point.
• 0 – First additional attribute specified.
• 1 – Second additional attribute specified.
• 2 – Third additional attribute specified.
• 8 – Nineth additional attribute specified.
• 9 – Tenth additional attribute specified.

Current Location in Toolbox

Lidar/Text to LAS

Related Tools

• LAS to Text