Orbit Point Cloud

The Orbit Point Cloud (*.opc) is Orbit's native point cloud file storage format.
An OPC stores point geometry and attribute.

An Orbit Point Cloud file has extended data structure capabilities compared to other point cloud storage formats like LAS and E57.

The OPC is extremely optimized for fast viewing and querying of point cloud data in Orbit. The format is platform independent without dependencies or use of third party libraries.
The unique technology makes it possible to view and use unlimited size point cloud resources.

The OPC is not optimized for storage volume.
The file size is similar to LAS file, but options are available to filter points (homogeneous maximum point density) or strip attributes (delete Timestamp,R,G,B,I) at import to reduce file size significantly.

• Convert Data
• Optimize Data
• Mapping Runs, Import 3D Mapping Data

When using an ascii text file as source file to create an OPC, a text_import.ini configuration file must be present in the source directory. This configuration file describes the file structure including the value separator as ascii character code.

Example for geographical coordinates, including Intensity and RGB values. Space separated.

ColumnNames lat;lon;z;i;r;g;b
Separator 32

Example for projected coordinates without additional attributes. Tab separated.

ColumnNames x;y;z
Separator 9

Strip Attributes
Options to remove source attributes in target point cloud file.
Removing timestamps if available will significantly reduce the point cloud file size.

Filter Points
Option to filter point cloud to avoid extreme point density peaks and to obtain an overall homogeneous maximum point density.

Density
The Density option affects storage, performance and filtering if applied.

• Auto define density by random samples for optimized performance.
• Preset density for specific use cases :
  • TLS (Terrestrial LiDAR Scan) / High density
  • MLS (Mobile LiDAR Scan) / Medium density
  • ALS (Airborne LiDAR Scan) / Low density

Importing a point cloud resource file to OPC is an one time process.
Processing time is affected by :

• Storage format of source data.
• Storage location of source and target.
• Processing and computing power.

For example reading a LAS file from SSD to write an OPC to SSD storage using Intel i7 processor and 4GB Memory will take 2 Seconds per Million points.

The resource can be accompanied by an Orbit Legend File and Orbit Resource Descriptor.