Point Builder Application Release Notes

Version 1.7.1

Added Features

• Added the ability to load in multiple point files
• Added the ability to set the Mask Size that is useful when extracting the terrain of sparse points
• Added the ability to load and save contours which includes the inside/outside property
• Zoom on Selection and Clear Selection buttons uses text instead of icons

Fixed Bugs

Version 1.6.4

Added Features

• Tab ordering in filtering panel has been changed to be more consistent
• Zoom on Selection and Clear Selection buttons uses text instead of icons

Fixed Bugs

• Points Builder was not saving all of the points (Mantis:9661)
• Removing the contour widget while creating a contour will leave the 2D/3D manipulation mode disabled (Mantis:9694)

Version 1.6.3

Fixed Bugs

• Fixed extra precision problem caused by casting a float to an int (the algorithm now uses floor instead).
• Fixed problem that sometimes the contour widget will not draw if it is started when the camera is in 3D manipulation mode (Mantis bug# 0009356)

Version 1.6.2

Added Features

• In 2D manipulation mode, Shift Right mouse button moves the position of camera in/out relative to the focal point. Since in 2D mode, the only visible change to user is moving the near clipping plane.
• Added new toolbutton to allow setting of focal point when setting rotation center. This is an aide for creating contours.
• Added constraint that contours can only be created when in 2D Manipulation Mode
• "Adjust Camera" available on View menu to give access to ParaView's camera dialog

Fixed Bugs

• Intermittent crash due to progress bar update
• Rubberband selection highlighted points instead of the piece as intended

Version 1.6

Added Features

• Modified contour widget's creation to use the camera focal point as starting point.

Version 1.5

Added Features

• Terrain Extraction multi-threaded (extraction phase only)
• Terrain Extraction performance improvement by limiting token extraction to requested bounds (internal, not a user parameter).

Fixed Bugs

• Internal parameter of Terrain Extraction not initialized large in some cases
• Using an ROI to clip away all of a piece in the original input and saving as multiple pieces would cause crash

Version 1.3.5

Added Features

• Updated Splash and About screens
  
• Added option to determine color for extracted terrain points based on input color (if present).
• Can read "bin.pts" and "bin" files (same format, different extension), but only write bin.pts<
• Float precision (default output for LAS and LIDAR Pts files), not always sufficient to reasonably capture the detail of the data. User is prompted if should use double precision if float precision is questionable (less than 4 digits to represent the range on each axis)
• "Preview" (with option for ElevationFilter) implemented for the terrain extraction output
• Added progress status for appending of files (into fewer large files) after terrain extraction
• Removed spin boxes for entry of "Target # of Points" (to load/display) and "Spacing" (for Terrain Extraction)

Fixed Bugs

• Crashed if no tokens found for a level (which probably will only happen when very few input points)
• Crashed if no pieces were "selected" when selecting the terrain extraction panel.
• Terrain extraction failed if Z bounds not within -1000 and 1000
• Precision issue - ASCII Pts writer only wrote 7 digits of precision, which might not be enough for the data. ASCII precision is increased if less than 4 digits capture the range of values for each axis.
• Reader and Writer of PTs files modified to work for pieces that have 0 points; had been producing invalid files that caused crash upon reading.
• Binary Pts format was broken on Mac and between platforms (reading would given garbage points)
• Could load data into "main app" while on the terrain extraction panel, yet the terrain extraction panel still displayed (Setup for) the old data. Can still load while on the extraction panel, but now forces to the main panel and clear info from the extraction panel.

Version 1.3.4

Added Features

• New memory management for terrain extraction allows extraction of ~10 million input points on 32-bit machines (considerably more on 64-bit with several GB of memory). The limitation is due to a few more changes necessary to the token refinement code. The number of output points is nearly unrestricted... as long as there is at least 0.5 GB of main/virtual memory available.
• Dialog at completion of terrain extraction indicates it has completed.

Version 1.3.3

Added Features

• Name changed from LIDAR Viewer to Point Builder
• Terrain Extraction Panel overhauled (now choose desired spacing instead of picking levels)
• Data is automatically rotated (internally, not visible to user) to optimize terrain extraction

Version 1.3.2

Added Features

• No (significant) change from previous release

Version 1.3.1

Added Features

• Added LAS reader support

Fixed Bugs

• If a new dataset is loaded over an existing data, the display panel may show duplicated/multiple

Version 1.3.0

Added Features

• Added "Hover" (2D coordinates) in lower left corner of GUI when in 2D manipulation mode
• Setting of canonical directions no longer does a resetView; the focal point is unchanged, but the camera position (based on desired view direction and "current" camera distance) and viewUp are changed. This allows the view to stay focused on a region of interest. The user can click "resetView" if zooming out was also desired (so extra click in that case).
• When switching between 2D and 3D manipulation modes, set parallel scale or camera position (respectively) to keep approximately the same view (of course, when switching to 2D, will be looking down a major axis, so it is really the apparent "distance" of the camera from the data that is kept ~constant).
• Changed 2D controls to more closely match 3D controls (in particular, Pan as middle mouse button)
• Added option under "View" to convert from Lat/Long to xyz coordinates
• Added Elevation Filter, including controls for min and max Z to map between (initially default to data min/max)
• Add Clip Contour option; can group mulitple contours to get either interior or exterior of group's intersection
• Integrated Terrain Extraction functionality

Fixed Bugs

• onRatio logic led to onRatio 1 greater than desired (if set to 2, meaning wanted half the points, 3 was used instead, so only a third of the points were read) for all but case of "1" (read all the points)
• threshold filter caused crash if no color data

Version 1.2.1

Added Features

• Can switch between "2D Manipulation and "3D Manipulation" options for camera

Fixed Bugs

• Threshold filter now works correctly if piece transformed
• Threshold filter did work correctly on saving if there was more than one "threshold criteria" (only the last viewed in edit dialog was used)

Version 1.0.0

Added Features

• Initial release of LIDAR Viewer, which includes a Threshold Filter