Coastal Services Center

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Tools

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The NOAA Coastal Services Center has developed software tools to help use elevation data within a geographic information system and convert data between a number of datums and projections.

LIDAR Data Handler
This ArcView extension provides tools to manipulate Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) data; it requires the use of the ESRI Spatial Analyst extension.

Point Converter Tool (Java Applet)
This Web-based tool allows "xyz" point data to be projected or transformed to a number of different projections and datums.

Software Options for Point (x,y,z) Topography Data

While many options exist to work with raster digital elevations models, the options for working with point data are less well known. Below are some of the software options we have tried or heard of for working with x,y,z topographic data. This is not an endorsement of any product and we have not tried all of these products. Products are listed in alphabetic order by the company or group that produces them. A more comprehensive list of software may also be found at http://www.vterrain.org, though most of them deal with raster DEM data.

• QT Modeler and QT Reader from Applied Imagery – Two standalone packages that can handle up to 200 million points.
• Matlab from MathWorks - This package covers a broad range of data analysis and visualization abilities, including working with points.
• IDL from RSI – This package covers a broad range of data analysis and visualization abilities, including working with points.
• Surfer from Scientific Software Group – 3D contouring and surface plotting program.
• TerraScan from Terra Solid – This is an extension/addition to Bentley Microstation and will handle millions of points in xyz or LAS format.
• LIDAR Analyst and Feature Analyst from Visual Learning Systems – Tools for extracting geospatial features of interest.
• Amber iQ is a standalone GIS mapping product that has been built from the ground up using the Microsoft .NET development environment. Although it is standalone, data files can be imported/exported to and from other main stream mapping products. One of its key features is to be able to handle large data sets. For example Amber iQ can quickly bring in millions of points (LIDAR) and interpolate them into a surface of any size without any pre-processing.

If you know of additional software that can reasonably work with millions of points, please let us know by sending an email to csc@csc.noaa.gov with a subject "Attn: TCM Project" and we'll add it to this page.

Software Options for 3D Terrain Visualization

The U.S. Army Topographic Engineering Center completed a software survey that provides an overview of the many potential commercial solutions available for 3-D terrain visualization applications.