Earthworks and sites
On a construction site the deliverable is a number somebody is paid against, so what matters is not the picture but whether the surfaces under it can be checked.
Surfaces, and what sits on them
- Bare-earth and surface rasters at the cell size you ask for, each carrying its own CRS.
- Contours at your interval, with index contours on their own layer, as GIS geometry or as a drawing.
- Cross-sections at stations along an alignment, with a long profile.
- A ground triangulation, where the deliverable is a model rather than a grid.
Volumes between two epochs
Cut and fill over a boundary you give, reported separately rather than netted, between two flights of the same site or between a flight and a design surface. The record beside the result names both surfaces, the cell size and the boundary, which is what makes it something the other side can repeat rather than something they have to accept.
Control, before correction
Ground control is treated as a check that may lead to a correction, not as a correction. The residuals at each point are reported first; a rigid solve can then be applied, and the report carries the residuals on both sides of it.
The same command accepts a single file or a directory of flight strips. Strip overlap is removed on merge rather than left to double the point density in the seams, which is where a volume quietly gains a percentage.
What you get
Deliverables go out as LAZ, GeoTIFF, GeoJSON, DXF, shapefile with a .prj, E57, PLY, CSV, OBJ, glTF, LandXML, COPC and 3D Tiles.
Questions we are actually asked
How are volumes computed?
Between two surfaces, cell by cell, over the polygon you give: cut and fill are reported separately as well as netted, because the two are priced differently and a net figure hides both.
Can I compare a survey to a design surface?
Yes — a raster you supply stands in as either side of the comparison, so a flown survey against a design model is the same operation as one epoch against another.
Are the numbers checkable?
Every measurement comes back as a machine-readable record beside the drawing, with the surfaces, the cell size and the boundary it was computed over, so somebody can repeat it.
What about cross-sections along an alignment?
Sections at stations along a line you give, at the interval and width you set, each with a long profile, as drawings and as the underlying numbers.
Does it handle several flight strips of one site?
The same command accepts a single file or a directory of flight strips.
How are ground control points used?
As a check first: residuals at each point, reported before anything is applied. A rigid solve can then be applied to the cloud, and the report carries the residuals before and after so the correction is a decision rather than a side effect.