Using lasmerge in Arcgis to merge many las files

[Jamie Davis]

Hello,

I am trying to merge a few hundred las files using lasmerge in arctoolbox.  The only way that I can see to do this is to add the files one at a time.  Is it possible to add all the las files to the merge tool at once, or add the folder containing the las files?  I'm sure there is a better way than what I am trying.

Thanks,  Jamie

[Martin Isenburg]

Hello Jamie,

great question. Although usually my first response tends to be: Why do
you want to merge LAS files into one? Most of the time when I have
seen a lasmerge operation in the workflows of my users the first thing
I do is to optimize it away. All LAStools can "merge on-the-fly" so
that there is usually no need to create a second merged copy of all
points on disk. Always ask yourself ... do you really need to merge
the files? (-:

It is easy to add a wild-card to specify more than one input file for
lasmerge (and many other tools) of the LAStools toolbox for ArcGIS.
Simply use the new "additional command line parameters" option as
shown in my screenshot. Note that the option '-unique' needs to
preceed the wildcard. Otherwise the two files listed as input file 1
and input file 2 will be merged twice into the final file "big.laz".
Further note that the option '-unique' was just now added to LAStools
so wait for the next version before you try this.

In the screen shot I also added the '-files_are_flightlines' option as
my test input from the "strips_raw" folder are individual flight
lines. The '-files_are_flightlines' option will set the point source
ID of each point from the same strip to the same value (e.g. first 1,
then 2, then 3, ... ) so that the points from different flight lines
can still be identified correctly after the merge.

Regards,

Martin @rapidlasso

--
http://rapidlasso.com - fast tools to on-the-fly merge your LiDARs