Native point cloud Processing provider (QEP 263) (Request in QGIS)

[qgis-bot]

Request for documentation

From pull request qgis/QGIS#52182
Author: @alexbruy
QGIS version: 3.32

Native point cloud Processing provider (QEP 263)

PR Description:

Description

Add new native Processing provider with point cloud algorithms, as described in qgis/QGIS-Enhancement-Proposals#263. Under the hood provider uses pdal_wrench command line tool.

Currently available algorithms:

• Information: outputs a basic metadata of the point cloud (number of points, extent, crs, etc)
• Convert format: convert point cloud to a different format, e.g. las to laz
• Reproject: reproject point cloud to a different CRS
• Fix projection: fix (assign) CRS of a point cloud file
• Clip: clip point cloud by clipping polygon(s)
• Merge: merge multiple point clouds in a single file
• Tile: create tiles from input data
• Thin: create a thinned version of the point cloud
• Boundary: export vector layer containing point cloud boundaries
• Density: export a raster file where each cell contains number of points that are in that cell's area
• Export to raster: export point cloud data to a 2D raster grid
• Export to vector: export point cloud data to a vector layer with 3D points
• Export to raster (TIN): export point cloud data to a 2D raster grid using a triangulation of points
• Filert: extract subset from the point cloud using PDAL expressions

As pdal_wrench requires PDAL >= 2.5.0, PDAL version requirement in QGIS was also updated.

Commits tagged with [need-docs] or [FEATURE]

[saberraz]

@DelazJ feel free to use texts/graphics from the following blogs describing the tools for the documentation:
https://www.lutraconsulting.co.uk/blog/2023/05/30/pointcloud-qgis-processing/
https://www.lutraconsulting.co.uk/blog/2023/06/08/virtual-point-clouds/