BE Magazine - Volume 4, Issue 3 - (Page 50)

GEOSPATIAL level, low vegetation level, medium vegetation level, or high vegetation level. We then create a surface, triangulating all of the points classiﬁed as ground.” He explained, “We can add as many classiﬁcations as we want, assigning colors to indicate these different classes. The high vegetation and the ground are the most useful levels because that gives a good indication of trees and buildings as well as the ground. If required, we can also use a combination of traditional land surveying of road edges and aerial photography inﬁll.” Greirson continued, “We operate two LiDAR systems, both of which ultimately depend on MicroStation. We use the v M25 3D DTM shaded relief Optech ﬁxed-wing system from Blom Geomatics in Norway and initially we used the TopEye helicopter-based system from Blom Sweden.” The Mark 2 version of TopEye collects over 50,000 points per second, to a high degree of accuracy. It can be ﬂown at low altitudes and has an excellent ability to penetrate vegetation, producing point densities of up to 20 points per square meter, enabling large scale topographic surveys to be undertaken.” As Greirson pointed out, “The Terrasolid developers made a deliberate decision to use MicroStation because of its capabilities and it is now the graphics engine of choice for LiDAR processing.” Greirson recalled, “Adopting LiDAR, we initially installed one seat of Terrasolid and one seat of MicroStation, increasing this to eight seats as we won more and more contracts. Up to that point, we’d only ever used AutoCAD. True, we had provided mapping to a major rail client in MicroStation DGN format, but we had done this by converting from AutoCAD DWG format.” Greirson explained, “In MicroStation V8, Bentley has extended the DGN database to v M25 3D DEM intensity values include AutoCAD DWG element types, providing AutoCAD DWG memory at this point and only saved in support at the platform MicroStation DGN format once processing level. Because of this is complete.” He continued, “Visualization excellent support for and animation is built in to MicroStation as native DWG, it doesn’t standard and you can attach different line styles to the 3D representation as an aid to really matter if the client understanding and interpretation. Creating is using MicroStation or dynamic 3D ﬂy-throughs is simple and AutoCAD or both.” intuitive. Just create the ﬂight line, press the However, for Greirson, button, and MicroStation does the rest—no “I have absolutely no extra software required.” concerns at all about Blom Aeroﬁlms has completed a numrunning a mixed enviber of large-scale and high-proﬁle LiDARronment, and we are based projects including a full survey of now ﬁnding that more London’s M25 orbital motorway including and more clients are all carriageway and ‘stubs and tails’, totalasking for MicroStation ing over 400 kilometers or 2,500 line-kilodeliverables.” meters of data. The project was ﬂown at Greirson continued, only 100 meters using helicopter-based “The way in which MicroStation works is of great beneﬁt to us. To ensure high performLiDAR for vegetation penetration and high ance, the large amounts of LiDAR data— accuracy. Gaunt is certain: “We clearly made the right decision to invest in LiDAR at often many gigabytes—are held in virtual an early stage. We are an established player with many successful projects to our name and there is no longer any need for us to sell the benefits of the technology. Through investing in technologies such as LiDAR, we are increasing our competitiveness and we are adding value for our customers. We could not do this without MicroStation.” v M25 3D DEM shaded relief 50 BE MAGAZINE | Volume 4, Issue 3

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of BE Magazine - Volume 4, Issue 3

Contents Rising to the Challenge News BE Newsletter Highlights More ITS Sightings Racing Concrete Canoes Lights, Camera, Action! Making the Cut People’s Choice Awards 2007 Executive Keynotes Building Clear Vision of a Dream Concrete Results Reaching New Heights Building News From Bentley Golden KIWI Awards 2007 Civil A Coordination of National Highway Proportions Training Troops Beautifying Highways, One Sign at a Time Civil News From Bentley Geospatial Facility Facelift Planning for Uncertainty Geospatial News From Bentley MicroStation at the Heart of LiDAR Surveying Solutions Plant Making the Grade Data Deja Vu Data Clouds Provide Clear Visual of Underground Saving Precious-Metal Mining Time Plant News From Bentley Advertisers Index Special/Academic The Art of Visualization Training Is Key To Delivering State-of-the-Art Solutions Bridging the Information/Infrastructure Gap

BE Magazine - Volume 4, Issue 3

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