64 bit executables

[Martin Isenburg]

Hello,

the latest LAStools release (version 180907) included a large number of 64 bit Windows executables that were created with the MSVC 2017 compiler. For the LASlib library and the open source part of LAStools there are also (contributed) Cmake files *thank you!) that will build a static library and select tools for you. Download from

http://rapidlasso.com/LAStools

http://lastools.org/download/CHANGES.txt

The new 64 bit Windows executables can also be found in the .\LAStools\bin folder with the same name but with an *64,exe ending. These are command-line only and do *not* (yet) support parallel execution via the '-cores 4' switch. Also raster generation is limited to the ASC, BIL, CSV, DTM, FLT, LAZ, and XYZ formats. This is a first release and I would naturally expect a few bugs. Please report back if you find that a 64 bit executable produces different results than the corresponding 32 bit executable.

Regards from Costa Rica,

Martin @rapidlasso 

[Martin Isenburg]

Hello,

with today's LAStools release (version 180910) it becomes easier to use the 64 bit executables. On the one hand they are fully integrated into the GUI. See the attached screenshot. Pressing the "RUN64" button will run the new and largely untested 64 bit executable.  Pressing the "RUN32" button will run the old and well tested 32-bit executables.

You can update your scripts and command lines to run the new tools by simply adding '-cpu64' to your existing command lines. Hence you can continue to use the old tools names such as lasground and lasheight and simply add  '-cpu64'  to the command line. There is no need to explicitly call lasground64 and lasheight64 which have no GUI on their own.  This will also work in combination with parallel processing using '-cores 4'. To run lasheight with the 64 bit executables on 3 cores run:

lasheight -i tiles_buffered_ground/*.laz ^

                -replace_z ^

                -odir tiles_normalized -olaz ^

                -cpu64 -cores 4

Note that there are a few tools such as lascolor that do not yet (or may not ever such as laspublish) exist as a 64 bit version.

Also points can now be read from the PLY files (binary or ASCII). If you have a PLY file that does not load as expected, please let me know.

Regards,

Martin

[Eric Putman]

The 64 bit las2dem is running well in parallel.  Thanks, Martin!

R,

Eric

Long may LAZ reign!

[Tobias K Kohoutek]

Hi Martin,

lasgrid -i %INPUT_FILES%\*.%IN_FORMAT% ^

        -first_only ^

        -point_density -step 1 -false -set_min_max 0 10 ^

        -odir %OUTPUT_FILES%\mapa_densidad -odix _pre -otif ^

-cores %NUM_CORES% 

throws error in writing TIF. Without -cpu64 no problem at all and it works fine.

Chers,
Tobias

[Martin Isenburg]

Hello Tobias,

The only raster formats that can be written by the 64 bit tools lasgrid64, las2dem64, and lascanopy64 are BIL, ASC, XYZ, FLT, DTM, and gridded LAZ with griddee LAZ being by far the best in terms of storage. No TIF, IMG, JPG, or PNG support yet.

If we were to define a VLR that captures the grid spacing (and whatever else the HDR file of a BIL or the first few lines of an ASC file are specifying) then I could totally see other raster processing software to also ingest gridded LAZ as a default compressed raster format. Anyone see any issues with using gridded LAZ as a standard raster format?

Regards,

Martin

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