PIX4Dsurvey is surveying software based on photogrammetry and point clouds. It allows users to extract accurate topographical data from drone images or scans.

The software can be used by a wide range of organisations, including construction companies or regulatory bodies and environmental agencies. Also PIX4Dsurvey is able to work with all coordinate systems, including Stereo 70 (EPSG: 3844).

PIX4Dsurvey is an excellent choice for organizations that want to extract accurate topographical data from images collected by drones.

One of the advantages of using PIX4Dsurvey is the semi-automatic vectorization. This can be used in the current version to semi-automatically vectorize:

1. Roofs of buildings

As we can see in the example below (img. 1), the user only needs to identify on the point cloud, either in color or monochrome, the roof surfaces and mark them with a point, after which the program will automatically vectorize them on point cloud database. In this way, a polygon (img. 2), (img.3) with the roof surface is obtained in a few seconds, which can be exported in the following formats available in the program: DXF, SHP, ZIP SHP, GeoJSON and CSV.

Image 1: Identifying the roof surface

Image 2: Vectorization of the roof surface

Image 3: Vectorization of roof surfaces

2. Facades of buildings

As we can see in the example below (img. 4) as in the case of roofs, the user only needs to identify the facades he wants to vectorize, after which they can be exported in the same available formats. After performing the vectorization of the building facades (img. 5), the manual vectorization of the footprint of the building becomes much simpler.

Image 4: Identification of building facades

Image 5: Vectorization of building facades

3. The axis of the road

For this vectorization, it is necessary to use a cloud of colored points, on which the user must mark the beginning of a white lane in the road axis as well as the beginning of the next lane (image 6) so that the algorithm can then identify all the others, obtaining thus the axis of the road in vector format (img. 7).

Image 6: Identification of lanes in the road axis

Image 7: Automatic vectorization of the road axis

The second advantage of using PIX4Dsurvey is the easy vectorization of high and low power lines using Catenary vectorization (img. 8). As we can also see in the images below (img. 9) & (img.10).

Image 8: Catenary vectorization option

Image 9: Identifying the line we want to vectorize

Image 10: Line vectorization

Another advantage in using PIX4Dsurvey for processing point cloud data (img. 11) is given by the possibility to classify the land (img. 12) to obtain only the land area (img. 13). From this we can later extract a TIN (img.14) from which we can obtain the level curves of the land (img.15).

Image 11: The initial point cloud

Image 12: The classified point cloud

Image 13: Land surface

Image 14: The TIN

Image 15: Level curves

In conclusion, we can see the usefulness of PIX4Dsurvey in the processing and interpretation of photogrammetry and point cloud data.

To see the full range of PIX4D products on our website, visit this link.

Did you learn about the most accurate land surveying positioning device that uses a phone or a tablet? It’s actually the viDoc RTK Rover from PIX4D! We have a whole article here on the blog through which you can get a very clear picture of this product and the advantages it brings.