InnovMetric Software announced a new PolyWorks software feature: a data set import methodology to handle super-large data sets that cover thousands of square meters. This feature enables surveyors to handle data sets consisting of hundreds of millions of data points on standard 32-bit computers. The PolyWorks methodology consists of managing the point clouds by using grid cells uniformly distributed along the XY plane. As all the points cannot be kept in physical memory simultaneously, incoming point cloud files are read scan by scan, and points are relocated into their respective cells and written back to disk. Once all points have been imported, users can access specific areas to perform measurements or feature extraction by enabling or disabling grid cells. To prevent physical memory exhaustion, PolyWorks offers a grid cell manager that indicates to users how much RAM is used when grid cells are enabled.

Also, InnovMetric released PolyWorks/IMView software, a free application that enables the visualization of point cloud-based survey projects. PolyWorks/IMView allows users to: visualize extracted elements in 3D by browsing through extracted elements such as cross-sections, sharp edges and other feature lines (e.g. road lines, pipe center lines, electrical cables); perform basic interactive measurements, such as lengths, heights, angles, radii, volumes and cross-sections; and generate personalized reports in Excel, Word or HTML formats. This free viewer is available on InnovMetric's new website at www.innovmetric.com/surveying. (InnovMetric Software, Sainte-Foy, Quebec, Canada)