Lidar Compression/Decompression

MICRODEM currently only uses uncompressed LAS files.

There are two incompatible tools for lidar point cloud compression, which thankfully do not share the same file extension.  If you are a little fish in the ESRI ecosystem and have to stay with their data, the ESRI tool makes some sense.  Otherwise, go with LAStools or http://www.laszip.org/ which is open source and in much wider use.

 Tools submenu of the file menu has a Compress/Decompress  option

• Compress LAS to LAZ (requires LAStools, but only laszip)
• Decompress LAZ (requires LAStools, but only laszip)
  • Decompress and retain LAZ files
  • Decompress and recycle LAZ files
  • Decompress all LAZ files in subdirectories, and recycle LAZ files
• Compress LAS to zLAS (requires ESRI tool)
• Decompress zLAS (requires ESRI tool)

Last revised 5/30/2021