Clicking the Contours button in the extract panel of the Action Tab will bring up a separate dialog with options relating to extracting contours from the current scene. The only requirement for contour extraction is that the data, either a point cloud, a mesh, or a scan is being viewed in a scene. Although Carlson PointCloud will try to extract contours from a cloud or a scan, it is still best practice to extract from a mesh.
The Interval extraction method extracts contours at every multiple of elevation interval between the minimum and maximum elevation values (a minimum of 2.5 and an interval of 5.0 would have the first contour elevation be at 5.0). The Elevation method only extracts the contours at the specified elevation value. By default, the Minimum and Maximum elevation values are the minimum and maximum elevations of current scene and clicking the calculator icon to the right of each of these values will return them back to their default values. Min Length determines the minimum length of a contour line to be drawn. Upon extraction, contours will be given an automatically generated name and added to the Contours folder in the project tree.
Apply Outlier Reduction Filter reduces spikes in contours
from errant points.
Reduce Vertices removes vertices from the contour polylines
provided the removed vertex is not further away from the new line
than the Offset Distance
Reduce Before Bezier Smoothing works in a manner similar to
reduce vertices using its own Offset Distance
Smoothing - Sliding the bar to the left results in a lower
setting which will have less looping or less freedom to curve
between contour line points. Likewise, moving the slider to the
right results in a setting that increases the looping effect. Note
that too much smoothing applied in some situations can result in
crossing contours.
If Draw planes is enabled, plane objects will be added to the project and the scene that cut the through the scene at each extracted elevation level. The planes will be horizontal and extend to the limits of the cloud. While this can be useful for a single elevation contour that is extracted, it creates many planes when used with an interval extraction.
Tab Location: Action
Panel and Button: Extract and Contours
Prerequisite: Open Point Cloud Scene of a scan, cloud or
mesh