**************************************************************** this file is deprecated - see *.md version of this file **************************************************************** lastile: tiles a potentially very large amount of LAS points from one or many files into square non-overlapping tiles of a specified size and save them into LAS or LAZ format. The square tiling used by lastile is chosen for two reasons: (a) it is by far the most common way that LAS files are tiled for archival or distribution (b) it can (potentially) be exploited by our "streaming TIN" code for seamless & memory-efficient Delaunay triangulation of large amounts of tiles. A small VLR added to the header of each generated LAS/LAZ tile stores the tile index in the square quad-tree from which its min/max extend can be computed. The VLR also tells LAStools whether a tile has buffers. Why are buffers important? See: http://rapidlasso.com/2015/08/07/use-buffers-when-processing-lidar-in-tiles/ The tool can either operate in one or in two reading passes via a commandline switch ('-extra_pass'). The additional reading pass is used to collect information about how many points fall into each cell. This allows us to deallocate LASwriters for tiles that have seen all their points. This is *only* really needed when writing LASzip compressed output of very large tilings to avoid having the LASwriters using LASzip compression for all tiles in memory at the same time. Optionally the tool can also create a small '-buffer 10' around every tile where the parameter 10 specifies the number of units each tile is (temporarily) grown in each direction. It is possible to remove the buffer from a tile by running lastile across all tiles again but with the '-remove_buffer' option. You can also '-flag_as_withheld' or '-flag_as_synthetic' all of the buffer points to drop them more easily with the standard filters. Optionally the tool can also create an '-reversible' tiling that will allow to recreate the original file from all the individual tiles. This is useful to, for example, break a large LAS file into many tiles with buffers, classify each tile individually with lasclassify.exe or compute the height of each point with lasheight.exe, and then put the original large LAS file back together with '-reverse_tiling'. Note that for the unlicensed version the gps_time is set to zero and the point are permutated a tiny bit. Do *not* use this option unless you are *really* sure you need it. In order to prevent the bounding box in the LAS header from being shrunk to the actual extent of the points and set it to the full extent of the corresponding tile use '-full_bb'. This will pad the tiles to tile size plus buffer when run in '-buffer 20' mode. Used together with '-remove_buffer' this option results all tiles being set to the full extent of each tile after the offset was removed. It is also possible to create adaptive tilings. Start with the largest desired tile size and add '-refine 10000000' or '-refine_tiling 10000000' as an option to the command line. Next call lastile again using all the just generated tiles as input and instruct lastile to '-refine_tiles 10000000'. You may repeat if greater adaptivity is needed. This is especially useful for surveys with great density variation, like mobile, terrestrial, and UAV scans. Here a small example: lastile -i mobile_scan/strip0*.laz ^ -tile_size 1024 -buffer 5 ^ -refine_tiling 10000000 ^ -odir tiles_raw -o singapore.laz lastile -i tiles_raw/singapore*_1024.laz ^ -refine_tiling 10000000 ^ -olaz ^ -cores 4 lastile -i tiles_raw/singapore*_512.laz ^ -refine_tiling 10000000 ^ -olaz ^ -cores 4 lastile -i tiles_raw/singapore*_256.laz ^ -refine_tiling 10000000 ^ -olaz ^ -cores 4 lastile -i tiles_raw/singapore*_128.laz ^ -refine_tiling 10000000 ^ -olaz ^ -cores 4 By default a tile gets deleted after it was refined into four smaller tiles. Add '-dont_delete_refined' to the command line to keep the original tiles around. To shift the tiling off its standard modulo tile_size tiling you can use the '-tile_ll 25 75' option. If you run lastile in parallel using '-cores 4' or so it is *REALLY* important that your input data is spatially indexed or things will slow down a lot (as each tile requires reading the entire input). Make sure you run lasindex to create a LAX file for each input file before lastiling on mutiple cores. For those who have user-defined tilings to deliver there is also the option '-external_tiling tiles_utm_600m.shp TNAME' that expects a SHP files with rectangular tiles with a corresponding string attribute called TNAME in the DBF file. Please license from info@rapidlasso.de to use LAStools commercially. For updates check the website or join the LAStools google group. https://rapidlasso.de/ http://groups.google.com/group/lastools/ see also: lassplit - Merge or split lidar data files by number of points example usage: >> lastile -i *.las -o tile.las tiles all points from all files using the default tile size of 1000. >> lasindex -i *.laz -cores 8 >> lastile -i *.laz -files_are_flightlines -buffer 25 -o tiles\tile.laz -cores 4 spatially indexes all compressed LAZ files and then tiles them on 4 cores using the default tile size of 1000 and a buffer of 25 while setting the point source ID of each point to the file number it is from. >> lastile -i *.las -full_bb -o tile.laz same but sets the bounding box in the header to the full extend of all tiles (rather than to the actual extent of its points) and also compresses the while writing them tiles >> mkdir tiles >> mkdir tiles_no_buffer >> lastile -i *.las -buffer 10 -o tiles\tile.las >> lastile -i tiles\tile_*.las -remove_buffer -odir tiles_no_buffer -olaz each tile gets buffer points for 10 units in all directions. also puts the tiles into directory 'tiles'. the second command removes all buffer points and writes the tiles compressed to the 'tiles_no_buffer' folder >> lastile -i large.laz -tile_size 500 -buffer 10 -reversible -o tile.laz >> lastile -i tile_*.laz -reverse_tiling -o large_reversed.laz tiles file 'large.laz' with tile size 500 and buffer 10 in reversible mode. the second command removes all buffer points, reconstructs the original point order, and stored the result as 'large_reversed.laz'. >> mkdir toronto >> lastile -i *.txt -iparse xyzti -odir toronto -o tile.laz same but with on-the-fly converted ASCII input >> lastile -i in1.las in2.las in3.las -o sydney.laz -tile_size 500 tiles the points from the three LAS files with a tile size of 500. >> mkdir outer_banks >> lastile -lof obx_files.txt -keep_class 2 3 -tile_size 100 -odir outer_banks -o tile.laz tiles all LAS/LAZ files listed in the text file with a tile size of 100 keeping only points with classification 2 or 3 >> lastile -lof file_list.txt -o tile.laz -extra_pass tiles all LAS/LAZ files listed in the text file into a LASzip compressed tiling using the default tile size of 1000 and uses an extra read pass in an attempt to use less memory. >> mkdir toronto >> lastile -i huge.laz -last_only -odir toronto -o tile.laz tiles the last returns from huge.laz into compressed tiling. -extra_pass : do extra read pass to count points (only makes sense when filtering) -overview : unused -flag_as_withheld : flag buffer points as withheld -flag_as_synthetic : flag buffer points as synthetic -refine : refine a former tiling -refine_tiling : refine a former tiling -refine_tiles : refine a former tiling -unindexed : force processing even if input is not indexed -kdtree : use tree structure for fast overlap checks -external_tiling tiles.shp [n]: use external tile info out of the given shape with DBF attribute [n] -reversible : allow reverse tiling after processing the tiles -reverse_tiling : recreate the original file by reverse tiling -full_bb : prevent the bounding box from being shrunk to the actual extent of the points -remove_buffer : set size to the full extent of each tile after removing offset -single_tile [n] : generate just tile with index [n] -single_tile_bb [n] min_x min_y max_x max_y : generate tile with index [n] and the given bounding box -external_tile : generate one external defined tile with the given bounding box -dont_delete_refined : keep original tiles around tile refinement to 4 smaller tiles -tile_ll [m] [n] : shift tiling off its standard modulo tile_size tiling