Trimble Business Center

clayton. i have a few thoughts. first we have had projects with sx10 and lidar we process ourselves and have it match up well in tbc. so i have a feeling that is not the issue. we are in canada working in utm grid with terrestrial work and know the system our drone stuff is in, though it took some work. we import with the grid option with no change applied to the lidar point clouds.

try checking the header of the lidar data and see what is going on there. it might be missing info on the projection or be in a wrong system. so it places it correctly in a scale only project, but wrong in a grid system.

a lot of lidar or uav ortho have a generic wgs84 to grid transformation applied to them from teams with less experience then most survey outfits. these coordinates look like grid because las files can not handle degrees minutes seconds, but i think they are based off of the initial generic utm grid and do not account for the current epoch of your area. in our case it is about 1.5 m shift. i am not familiar with state plane but i think it is mostly similar but in feet. one large pain we have had is that tbc does not seem to be able to handle these in it s coordinate system manager. or we have not found a way to do it. well we can do it, but it messes with the vertical. i don t want to get too into the details if this is not actually your problem. but we have to use other gis or the uav software to do the transformations. 

also keep an eye on the vertical because if this is an issue most likely no geod is applied as well.

you need notepad plus to open the large laz files if you have not done it before. too large for notepad. 

in your case the header might just have some info missing.

i hope this helps. 

Hi Clayton,

 Start out with your TBC project in the Grid system you are working in. Upon import of the LAS files,  expand the advanced options within the import menu and select the coordinate system the LAS files are referenced to. TBC will perform a transformation of the LAS files to match the native system selected in your TBC project. Everything should lineup as it should. You may see a bit of a shift between the 2 data sets, this will most likely be from discrepancies between the control between the 2 data sets. Hopefully there is enough overlap between the 2 data sets to allow you to georeference the LAS files to remove any control error.  

I hope this helps. 

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Brandon Elia
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Hi Brandon, this is one of the options i have tried.  It works fine until i import any terrestrial scanning.  At which point the terrestrial scanning comes in at the expected location and the previously imported aerial LiDAR files shift.

I remember at some point there was Trimble documentation about how TBC treats terrestrial LiDAR as being on the ground, not grid.  I thought maybe that is what was happening, so when I import my terrestrial data the aerial LiDAR becomes scales?  But, I can't prove that is the case.  

My work around, I imported all of the aerial LiDAR files into a Scale Only US Survey Foot drawing, then I exported that to a TDX type file.  I imported the TDX file into my TBC file that has all my terrestrial data and it came in at the correct location and didn't appear to transform.

I do appreciate Trimble Business Center attempting to be intelligent, but in this case, the LiDAR file we have been provided doesn't appear to be on the same control as our survey.  To be sure of this, I want Trimble Business Center to import the LAS file exactly at the coordinates listed for each of the millions of points.

I tried Ian suggestion of trying to read the LAS file header with Note Pad Plus, but it crashes.  I tried to read it with Cloud Compare but can only see a portion of the header and can't find a way to have it tell me the whole thing.

There is open source LASTools, but that level of opensource comman prompt line stuff is over my head.

Thank you everyone for the help.

Hi Clayton,

 Start out with your TBC project in the Grid system you are working in. Upon import of the LAS files,  expand the advanced options within the import menu and select the coordinate system the LAS files are referenced to. TBC will perform a transformation of the LAS files to match the native system selected in your TBC project. Everything should lineup as it should. You may see a bit of a shift between the 2 data sets, this will most likely be from discrepancies between the control between the 2 data sets. Hopefully there is enough overlap between the 2 data sets to allow you to georeference the LAS files to remove any control error.  

I hope this helps. 

------------------------------
Brandon Elia
------------------------------

Clayton,

 Last thing I can think of. Have you tried selecting "file from an unknown source" when importing the LAS files? This option should tell TBC to not apply any transformation to the files and allow them to import based on their published coordinates. I have to use this option when importing las files created from DJI Terra. 

Hi Brandon, this is one of the options i have tried.  It works fine until i import any terrestrial scanning.  At which point the terrestrial scanning comes in at the expected location and the previously imported aerial LiDAR files shift.

I remember at some point there was Trimble documentation about how TBC treats terrestrial LiDAR as being on the ground, not grid.  I thought maybe that is what was happening, so when I import my terrestrial data the aerial LiDAR becomes scales?  But, I can't prove that is the case.  

My work around, I imported all of the aerial LiDAR files into a Scale Only US Survey Foot drawing, then I exported that to a TDX type file.  I imported the TDX file into my TBC file that has all my terrestrial data and it came in at the correct location and didn't appear to transform.

I do appreciate Trimble Business Center attempting to be intelligent, but in this case, the LiDAR file we have been provided doesn't appear to be on the same control as our survey.  To be sure of this, I want Trimble Business Center to import the LAS file exactly at the coordinates listed for each of the millions of points.

I tried Ian suggestion of trying to read the LAS file header with Note Pad Plus, but it crashes.  I tried to read it with Cloud Compare but can only see a portion of the header and can't find a way to have it tell me the whole thing.

There is open source LASTools, but that level of opensource comman prompt line stuff is over my head.

Thank you everyone for the help.

Hi Clayton,

 Start out with your TBC project in the Grid system you are working in. Upon import of the LAS files,  expand the advanced options within the import menu and select the coordinate system the LAS files are referenced to. TBC will perform a transformation of the LAS files to match the native system selected in your TBC project. Everything should lineup as it should. You may see a bit of a shift between the 2 data sets, this will most likely be from discrepancies between the control between the 2 data sets. Hopefully there is enough overlap between the 2 data sets to allow you to georeference the LAS files to remove any control error.  

I hope this helps. 

------------------------------
Brandon Elia
------------------------------

Yes, i have and it still transforms the data.  It works fine, until i bring in terrestrial LiDAR (scanning by SX10).  Then it moves (transforms) the aerial LiDAR files.  Have you combined the DJI Terra with terrestrial LiDAR?

Clayton,

 Last thing I can think of. Have you tried selecting "file from an unknown source" when importing the LAS files? This option should tell TBC to not apply any transformation to the files and allow them to import based on their published coordinates. I have to use this option when importing las files created from DJI Terra. 

Hi Brandon, this is one of the options i have tried.  It works fine until i import any terrestrial scanning.  At which point the terrestrial scanning comes in at the expected location and the previously imported aerial LiDAR files shift.

I remember at some point there was Trimble documentation about how TBC treats terrestrial LiDAR as being on the ground, not grid.  I thought maybe that is what was happening, so when I import my terrestrial data the aerial LiDAR becomes scales?  But, I can't prove that is the case.  

My work around, I imported all of the aerial LiDAR files into a Scale Only US Survey Foot drawing, then I exported that to a TDX type file.  I imported the TDX file into my TBC file that has all my terrestrial data and it came in at the correct location and didn't appear to transform.

I do appreciate Trimble Business Center attempting to be intelligent, but in this case, the LiDAR file we have been provided doesn't appear to be on the same control as our survey.  To be sure of this, I want Trimble Business Center to import the LAS file exactly at the coordinates listed for each of the millions of points.

I tried Ian suggestion of trying to read the LAS file header with Note Pad Plus, but it crashes.  I tried to read it with Cloud Compare but can only see a portion of the header and can't find a way to have it tell me the whole thing.

There is open source LASTools, but that level of opensource comman prompt line stuff is over my head.

Thank you everyone for the help.

Hi Clayton,

 Start out with your TBC project in the Grid system you are working in. Upon import of the LAS files,  expand the advanced options within the import menu and select the coordinate system the LAS files are referenced to. TBC will perform a transformation of the LAS files to match the native system selected in your TBC project. Everything should lineup as it should. You may see a bit of a shift between the 2 data sets, this will most likely be from discrepancies between the control between the 2 data sets. Hopefully there is enough overlap between the 2 data sets to allow you to georeference the LAS files to remove any control error.  

I hope this helps. 

------------------------------
Brandon Elia
------------------------------