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September 2020
PHOTOGRAMMETRIC ENGINEERING & REMOTE SENSING
In Figure 2, I placed the tools on the LP360 Main
Toolbar and with a line feature selected (cyan line
using the Esri “selection” tool), the “Export Profile
by Selected Feature” is active (red circled tool).
Clicking on the “Export Profile by Selected Feature”
tool, invokes the Profile Export Settings dialog for
you to specify a shapefile to output the 3D profiles
into, the Profile Length (in map units) and the Step
Amount (distance between profiles in map units),
along with a CheckBox that provides the option of
exporting the elevation along the profiles only at the
beginning, end and where it crosses the selected fea-
ture.) The default is to construct a 3D vertex at each
place the profile crosses the internally-constructed
TIN edge. The tool will produce a 3D-line shapefile;
each record representing a profile with the vertices
encoded in the line.
For this example, I designated an output file, Figure 3, with
profiles to be 75.00m in length (37.5m to either side of the
selected line), and spaced every 50.00m along the selected
line. As with all ArcGIS tools, if multiple objects are selected,
the tool will process each object. Pressing “OK” will start the
tool processing.
When the processing is complete, LP360 for ArcGIS will
report to the screen, Figure 4, and clicking on “Yes” will add
the new shapefile to your map. You may need to adjust the
symbology, line thickness and color to suit your map prefer-
ences. I increased the line thickness and made the line color
red in the examples in Figure 5.
In Figure 6, opening the Attribute Table (left table) for the
output shapefile will show an individual 3D record (Polyline
ZM) for each profile generated, and upon opening an Esri ed-
iting session, selecting an individual profile line and choosing
the “Edit Sketch Properties” tool in ArcGIS, will reveal the
selected profile’s elevations (right table). The selected profile
line (highlighted in the left table) is located approximately
midway between the tables on the map. The Edit Sketch
Properties table (on right) shows the X, Y and Z (elevation)
values for the vertices along the selected profile.
Of course, the profiles are also viewable in the LP360 3D
window as 3D features in the point cloud in Figure 7.
Finally, just a few last tips:
1. If you want ground (ASPRS Class 2) profiles (the usual
case), make sure that you apply a filter to your point
cloud. The Export Profile tools respect applied filters, so if
no filters are applied, the elevations along the profile will
be extracted from the unfiltered (entire) point cloud, so
elevations in trees and above the surface will be included,
Figure 4.
Figure 3.
Figure 6.
Figure 5.
