Open/save a point cloud

This example demonstrates opening a point cloud with geoutils.open_pointcloud() and saving it with the pc accessor.

import geoutils as gu

We open an example vector.

filename_pc = gu.examples.get_path("coromandel_lidar")
pc = gu.open_pointcloud(filename_pc, data_name="Z", as_object_type="geodataframe")
pc

Dask-GeoPandas GeoDataFrame Structure:

	Z	geometry
npartitions=1
	float64	geometry
	...	...

Dask Name: geodataframe, 3 expressions

A point cloud is a geopandas.GeoDataFrame, with a main attribute data_name pointing to the main data column through its pc accessor. All other attributes are inherited from Shapely and GeoPandas. See also The georeferenced vector.

Note

GeoUtils point cloud methods can also be used on an existing geopandas.GeoDataFrame.

We can print more info on the point cloud.

pc.pc.info()

Filename:           None
Coordinate system:  ['NZGD2000 / New Zealand Transverse Mercator 2000 + NZVD2016 height']
Extent:             [1838792.524, 5887910.586, 1838937.061, 5888036.092]
Number of features: 584348
Attributes:         ['Z', 'geometry']

Let’s plot the point cloud main column

pc.pc.plot(cbar_title="Elevation (m)")

Finally, a point cloud is saved using to_file().

pc.pc.to_file("mypc.gpkg")