Trimble Business Center

we are running tbc 2023. i wanted to start this post to ask where the newer versions are at with advancements in point cloud classifications and extraction tools. and ask for more.

2023 does pretty good with classification when the terrain is relatively flat. we are in british columbia canada and we have mountains and cliffs here and dense vegetation. with 2023 we have no tools to adjust ground class parameters and end up missing a lot of ground as soon as it gets steep. i think i saw that there is some better tools for this in newer versions but not sure and not sure how much better they actually are. 

would like to have water class, transmission tower class, concrete pads as standard too.

in terms of extraction. i don t want to get too crazy. but there are certain basic things that i am looking for that i do not think are too big of asks, a lot of these we would want to drape over the ground clas:

edge of pavement

edge of gravel road

tree line for high veg class

slope breaklines and options for multiple ditchlines for deeper ditches(this is maybe less critical as the terrain models are so good breaklines seem to be no longer needed, but are sometimes asked for from clients)

fencelines

water

building corners

a trainable point extraction tool. i am thinking building corners, powerline attachment points, top of fence, culverts??? maybe,

thanks. if people have other software that they want to point us to this would also be appreciated. we are already running a lot of the free ones. R, cloud compare, qgis… but it is a waste of time jumping between softwares. 

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ian bissonnette
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Ian,

I'm not sure the capabilities for classification/extraction in 2023. However, here are the "out of the box" classification/extractions for TBC 2025.20. There are also options to train custom point cloud classification models, which can help create point features with the "generic point" extraction.

Point Feature

Line Feature

Generic Point Extraction 

Classification

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Jonas Collier
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What is your source of point cloud data?

I suggest you read through the release notes and watch Trimble videos on releases since your version. I think the point cloud classification training they introduced within the last year was only with one specific source of point cloud data.

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Robert Hoy
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robert. i read the release notes and was not that impressed and also know that not everything is included in those notes.
we are using uav lidar and sometimes sx10. but really the amount of data from the lidar is way higher than the scanner, and thus the tools i am after become more important.
2023 has some class training, but results i have tried have been mixed. i admit my tests have been rushed a bit when trying to get projects completed.

jonas. thanks for those snips. looks like there are a few tools extra there now. like the point extraction. not sure how that generic one would work for us. i guess i should get a demo and see how things run.
also curious about the classification modes. in 2023 there is a mode for aerial, but i believe this is geared toward plane lidar where the uav lidar is typically way more dense and we don t get great ground with the aerial mode. i have tried to train for ground with steep terrain/heavy vegetation, but again the results were not great. it actually puzzles me that this is such a hard thing to program. when you flip a uav point cloud upside down you see plain as day all the ground points. some software even strips to ground as you pan through the site. i have read some of the calculation algorithms for ground class and i see sort of where they are coming from. but there must be another way to get the best possible results.
i also have seen that rock pile has a ground classifier and curious if we should be looking at that for an option if tbc does not have what we need. i did contact them but did not hear anything back.


Original Message:
Sent: 11/10/2025 1:05:00 PM
From: Robert Hoy
Subject: RE: point cloud classification and extraction tools advancements

What is your source of point cloud data?

I suggest you read through the release notes and watch Trimble videos on releases since your version. I think the point cloud classification training they introduced within the last year was only with one specific source of point cloud data.

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Robert Hoy
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