Viewing and Inspecting Point Clouds   

• Reading Point Clouds
• Thinning and Combining Point Clouds
• Writing Point Clouds

This video demonstrates how to view, inspect, and query point cloud data. You will examine the attributes, components, coordinate system, and more.

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Open Point Cloud Data in the FME Data Inspector

The FME Data Inspector can be launched as a stand-alone application or by running an FME Workspace which includes an FME Data Inspector transformer. For complete documentation on the FME Data Inspector see the FME Data Inspector page.

In this example the FME Data Inspector is launched as a stand-alone application but the inspection tools are the same if the Data Inspector is launched by FME Workbench.

1. Start the FME Data Inspector application from your FME Desktop program group and select a dataset to view by clicking the Open Data Set icon, or using the menu File > Open Dataset.
2. In the Open Dataset dialog select the point cloud format of your data and browse to the dataset. You can use the LAS format and read the attached .laz file, or any of the LAZ files available in the FME Training Dataset here: <FMEData2017>\Data\PointClouds.
   • If the format is a database point cloud format such as Oracle Spatial Point Cloud, click the parameters button to enter the database parameters.
   • Try the Point Cloud XYZ format with attached XYZ Point Cloud File and use the parameters button to define the x,y,z fields and any other components which may exist such as intensity, color etc.
   • You can also define the coordinate system if the data contains coordinate system information or if FME cannot read the coordinate system information.
3. Once the parameters have been set, click OK to load the dataset into the FME Data Inspector. By default point cloud data is shown in 3D mode and a color ramp is automatically applied based on the z values of the points.

* For more information on reading point clouds see Reading Point Clouds.

Inspect the Attributes of the Point Cloud

1. Once the point cloud dataset is open, ensure the view is in 3D mode and if not enable 3D mode mode using the View menu or the icon.
2. Using the information tool , click and drag to window an area in the point cloud. Windowing any area displays attributes of the entire point cloud in the Feature Information Window. Because FME considers one point cloud to be a single feature, attributes such as Min and Max Extents, Coordinate System and Number of Vertices will be displayed. Lower down in the window you will see the geometry shown as IFMEPointCloud with a special point cloud icon. Within the geometry a hierarchy of any point cloud components which exist in the data will be shown, along with their data type.

Inspect the Components of a Single Point within the Point Cloud

1. Continue with the point cloud data open the in FME Data Inspector and 3D mode enabled.
2. To view the components of an individual point within the point cloud, click on an individual point. You may need to zoom in closer with the zoom tool first to see individual points.
3. At a minimum you will see the x, y and z coordinates of the point. If there are other components present such as intensity or color etc. these will be shown as well.

Data Attribution

• The data used here originates from open data made available by the City of Vancouver, British Columbia. It contains information licensed under the Open Government License - Vancouver.