The new subscription advantage pack for AutoCAD Map 3D - url has been released for a while, which have a new functionality for working with point cloud data. I have tried the building point cloud, which is in XYZ file format. The file size is over 1GB.

I was surprise that now CAD engineering software supports this kind of data rather than land surveying data only. The Lidar data has many advantages such as high spatial resolution and high spatial positioning accuracy.

I have captured some screen shots as below:

The raster surface is generated by the point cloud data. It supports to create GeoTIFF and ESRI ASC surface. It will create a surface from your filtered point cloud layer and add it to your map using the Create Surface Manager. The Raster design software can be used for further data manipulation e.g. feature extraction....

After creating the indexed point cloud data, it can be able to do filtering. This picture shows how to query the data by the elevation. It was used about half hour to doing the indexing. I've tried to filter out the point data which the elevation isn't within the range 1.51 - 5 m. It processes quite fast. It also support classification.

This is the GUI for processing the point cloud data. The Point display can be used to control the density of the points for displaying, the pan or zoom action will be doing fast if the density is low.

The point cloud data captured by laser scanner without the help of spectral information as well as other auxiliary data. All point data will be exactly reflected the shape of the existing building. All AutoCAD command or toolbar can be used e.g. labeling or measuring...

It supports the spatial query, in which it only show the interested area.

Summary
I like the ribbon interface, it can be easily to access all the relevant tools. The testing data is over 1GB file size, the speed is quite acceptable. I hope the more intensive function involves automatic feature extraction will be provided in future rather than point-cloud filtering, classification or spatial query.