A:

• Please check whether the software installation environment satisfies the recommended hardware configuration. If yes, please check the following two things. (1) Whether the graphic card is working properly. Right click on My Computer, select the device manager, find the corresponding graphic card in the Display Adapter, and view the graphic card properties status. If it shows "this device is working normally", it means that the graphic card device is running properly. (2) Update the graphic card driver to the latest version, and then use the high-performance graphic mode to run the software.
• Please contact us by email info@greenvalleyintl.com to check the reason remotely if you still get an error.

A: The LiDAR360 trial license fail might be caused by the following reasons:

• System Time Changes: During the trial period, some reasons that may cause system time change, resulting in expired trials.
• Trial Expiration: LiDAR360 has 30-day trial period for each version. If the same version has been installed for 30 days, the trial has expired.
• Other Reasons: Please contact us by email info@greenvalleyintl.com.

A:

• Send Activation Information: Run the software as administrator, click Help > Activate License in the menubar, or double-click the License Manager.exe in the installation directory.

• • Fill in Name (Mandatory);
  • Fill in Company (Mandatory);
  • Select the appropriate module(s);
  • Click Copy;
  • Send an email with the copied content to info@greenvalleyintl.com.
• Activate License：
  • Copy the license code to your local drive. Pleaser refer to the License Manager for license activation.

A: Windows Server is supported.

• Please install and activate LiDAR360 using the administrator account. The software must be installed in the folder to which all users have access.

A: When the trial period ends, you can still use the LiDAR360 software as a point cloud visualization tool. The major software functions, such as the viewer, measurement tool and selection tool in the toolbar will still be available. If you still need a full license or a license for a specific module, please contact us info@greenvalleyintl.com for more information on purchasing the software.

A: Please check if you have set the default program for opening PDFs. If not, please choose one.

A. Please sent an email to us through info@greenvalleyintl.com with the corresponding authroization code. We will revoke the code in the activation server for you so that it can be used in another computer.

A: You can check the version information of LiDAR360 in Help > About, 2.0 is the software version and 1019 is the build date.

A: Click Display > Language in the menubar. Currently the supported languages are English, Chinese and French.

A: Based on our experience, the major two reasons of abnormal exits are the insufficient disk space or memory space in your computer and the existence of opened instance of screen word capturing software. If you meet any other scenarios that lead to abnormal exits, please contact us info@greenvalleyintl.com.

A:

• LiDAR360 can import the following data formats:
  • Point Cloud: Proprietary LiData File(*.LiData), LAS File(*.las,*.laz), ASCII File(*.txt, *.asc, *.neu, *.xyz, *.pts, *.csv), PLY File(*.ply).
  • Raster: Image File(*.tif,*.jpg).
  • Vector: Vector File(*.shp).
  • Table: Table File(*.csv)
  • Model: Proprietary Model File(*.LiModel), Proprietary TIN File*.LiTin), OSG Model File(*.osgb, *.ive, *.desc, *.obj).
• LiDAR360 can export the following data formats:
  • Point Cloud: Proprietary LiData File(*.LiData), LAS File(*.las,*.laz), ASCII File(*.txt, *.asc, *.neu, *.xyz, *.pts, *.csv), PLY File(*.ply).
  • Raster: Image File(*.tif,*.jpg).
  • Vector: Vector File(*.shp, *.dxf)
  • Table: Table File(*.csv)
  • Model: Proprietary Model File(*.LiModel), Proprietary TIN File(*.LiTin).

A: First, right click on the desktop, select NVIDIA Control Panel.

Second, select  manage 3D settings -> program settings -> add to add LiDAR360 software to the list of high-performance graphics mode.

A: Go to RUN, or search "regedit.exe" then run as administrator. On Registry Editor go to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System, double click "EnableLUA", and change the value from 1 to 0. Restart windows, and the problem will be solved. Reference.

A: It's recommended to show distant multiple data in separate windows with EDL effect. Or remove unwanted data in the current window.

A: The unit is meter. If users have point clouds with foot or other units, they can be converted by Data Management > Projections and Transformations > Transformation. An example is shown in the following figure. X, Y, Z coordinates are multiplied by 0.3048 to be coverted from foot to meter.

A: Yes, it is.

A:

• Click Data Management > Projections and Transformations > Reproject.
• Check Use Seven Parameters.
• Input seven parameters: translations X, Y, Z; rotations Rx, Ry, Rz; and scale λ.
• Select target coordinate reference system. (You have to define projection for the point cloud if it doesn't have source coordinate reference system)

A:

• LiDAR360 provides subsampling methods by Minimum Points Spacing, Sampling Rate, or Octree. The subsampling by Octree is an uniform method.
• Click Data Management > Point Cloud Tools > Subsampling, then select the sampling type Octree.

A: Hold the Ctrl key and pick rotation center by left-click.

A: This is because different units are used in each program. In LiDAR360 degree units are used. In order to carry out a correct transformation, the units must be degrees.

A: You can view the residuals for all the homologous points pairs and remove the homologous points pairs with large residuals. After that, redo the rectifying process.

A: ASCII format (*.pos) and binary format (*.out) are currently supported.

• *.pos file contains GPS time, longitude and latitude, flight height, roll, pitch and heading. An example is shown as follows:

• *.out file is a proprietary format of the company Applanix.

A: There are both manual and automatic methods in LiDAR360. And the results will be displayed in real-time.

A: The only requirement is that the time stamps in POS file and point cloud data files have the same reference (e.g., GPS Time or UTC Time). If they are not the same, you have to convert one to the other. Generally, time in point cloud counts in SOW(seconds of a week) or SOD(seconds of a day).

A: This may occur if the POS file is of low accuracy. The principle of the Strip Alignment module is to correct boresight errors between laser scanner system and GPS/INS system. The precondition is that the POS accuracy for the acquired data meets the standard specifications. Otherwise the resulting point clouds are partially distorted. Boresight correction alone doesn't guarantee the aligned results with high accuracy.

A: Please check the GPS starting and ending time of both the POS file and the point cloud data. And see if there are any overlap between the GPS time of two files.

A: LiDAR360 uses an Improved Progressive TIN Densification (IPTD (Zhao et al.,2016) ) filtering algorithm to classify ground points.

A: If the actually scanned LiDAR point density is much greater than the production demand, you can use the Subsampling tool to subsample the point clouds. This function provides three types of subsampling methods: "Minimum Points Spacing", "Sampling Rate" and "Octree".

A: The broken contour lines may be caused by the lack of ground points. The contours can be contiguous by increasing the parameter "Triangle's Maximum Length" on the interface. For example, set 30 meters up to 50 meters or an even larger value.

A: You can convert your .tiff DEM into our custom 3D model format (LiModel). Go to Data Management->Conversion->Convert TIFF to LiModel.

A: Perform a smoothing operation using smooth height tool. Save the data. Then Convert the LiModel back to .tiff format, Data Management->Conversion-> Convert LiModel to TIFF. From here perform a contour operation-> Terrain -> Raster to Contour.

A: You can first create a hillshade map from the hillshade tool in the terrain module. This tool determines the illumination-enhanced surface visualization by setting each cell in the raster. At the same time, you can use Data Management > Conversion > Convert TIFF to LiModel to convert single-band Tiff images to LiModel. The LiModel can be viewed in 3D and is more intuitive. In addition, the model can be edited by using Terrain > LiModel Editor, such as "Flatten Height", "Smooth Height", and "Repair Height" to improve the quality of DEM. Similarly, DSM or CHM data can also be operated as above.

A：The results of Clip by Circle and Clip by Rectangle can be saved as multiple files or merged into a single file. The user can choose either one as an option.

A: LiDAR360 can generate CHM in batches (ALS Forest > Batch Process > Canopy Height Model(CHM) Segmentation).

A: For evaluation of individual tree segmentation accuracy, please refer to Li et al's article on (Li et al., 2012). By comparing with field measurement, the number of correctly segmented trees, the number of falsely segmented trees, and the number of missed trees are calculated according to the following formulae: recall (r), precision (p), and F-score (F). Recall indicates the tree detection rate, precision indicates the correctness of the detected trees, and F-score is the overall accuracy taking both commission and omission errors into consideration. The values of r, p and F vary from 0 to 1.

（a）Correctly detected tree (True Positive, TP)（b）undetected tree (False Negative, FN) （c）falsely detected tree(False Positive, FP)

A:

• The accuracy of CHM segmentation are affected by CHM resolution and Gaussian smoothing factor.
  • CHM is the difference between DSM and DEM. The CHM resolution is determined by the resolution of DSM and DEM. Generally speaking, this value should not exceed one-third of the crown width, and the range can be set to 0.3-1m. Usually, the resolution of 0.5-0.6m can get a higher segmentation accuracy.
  • Sigma is the Gaussian smoothing factor (default value is "1"). The greater the value is, the smoother the results are. The degree of smoothness can affect the number of trees being segmented. In the case of under-segmentation, it is recommended to reduce this value (e.g. 0.5); and in the case of over-segmentation, it is recommended to increase the value (e.g. 1.5).
• Moreover, beside the algorithm parameters, the CHM segmentation result can also be largely influenced by tree density and tree species. If the algorithm does not work well in s certain study area, users can try to use other segmentation algorithms to get the best segmentation result.

A: After running CHM segmentation, a shp file containing the tree boundary is obtained. The attribute table includes the ID, location, height, crown diameter and crown area of each tree. The data can be imported into a third-party software (e.g. ArcGIS), and you can remove the segmentation results with a small crown area according to the crown area attribute.

A: The parameter "Height Above Ground" on the Point Cloud Segmentation and Point Cloud Segmentation from Seed Points interfaces indicate that points below the value are not considered as part of the tree and will be ignored during the segmentation process. The default value is 2m. If you need to make the point cloud below 2m participate in the segmentation, the value can be reduced appropriately.

A: For coniferous and broad-leaved mixed forest data, CHM Segmentation is recommended.

A: It is recommended to clip the point cloud according to the growth as different data by Select Tools or Clip Tools and handle them separately.

A: Yes, it can.

A: Click ALS Forest > Extract by Tree ID, the segmented point cloud can be exported to CSV file for subsequent analysis using other software. LiDAR360 supports exporting each tree as a separate CSV file or exporting all points as one file. The exported CSV file is shown in the figure below, which contains X, Y, Z coordinates and tree ID information.

A: The number of sample data used for regression analysis is not clearly defined. In general, under the premise of ensuring the accuracy of plot location and measurement, the greater the number of sample data is, the higher the accuracy of regression analysis can achieve. Sample sites should be randomly selected and representative to cover different forest types within the study area. A sample size less than 30 is referred as a small sample, and a sample size of 30 or greater is referred as a large sample. To ensure regression analysis accuracy, the recommended sample size should be greater than or equal to 30 (you should also consider the size and complexity of the study area).

A. The elevation percentiles obtained from LiDAR data are generally the independent variables for regression analysis. However, specific elevation percentiles are not all the same for different study areas.

A. Yes. Click ALS Forest > Regression Analysis > Run Existing Regression Model. Available regression models (Linear Regression, Support Vector Machine, Fast Artificial Neural Network and Random Forest Regression) can be used to estimate forest metrics.

A. Yes. Independent variables provided by LiDAR360 including Elevation Percentile, Elevation Density, Intensity Percentile, Leaf Area Index, Canopy Cover and Gap Fraction. Among them, Elevation Percentile, Elevation Density and Intensity Percentile are in CSV formats, and they can be imported into third-party software such as SPSS directly. Leaf Area Index, Canopy Cover, and Gap Fraction are in TIF formats that can be converted to text format by ArcGIS and imported into third-party software.