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Vectorization: Contour Lines, Buildings, Trees, Power Lines, and More
Lidarvisor automatically extracts real-world features from your point cloud — building outlines, contour lines, terrain breaklines, individual trees, wooded areas, road and railway lines, bridges, water bodies, power line cables — and delivers them as clean, ready-to-use vector files for CAD and GIS. It can even fetch property boundaries from national open-data cadastres to give your survey legal context.
All vector outputs from Lidarvisor are available in three formats:
- GeoJSON — a web-friendly format viewable in any browser or GIS application
- Shapefile (.shp) — the most widely used GIS vector format, compatible with QGIS, ArcGIS, etc.
- DXF — a CAD format compatible with AutoCAD, Civil 3D, and other engineering software
This page explains each vector output in detail.
Contour Lines
What Are Contour Lines?
Contour lines are curves drawn on a map that connect points of equal elevation. If you have ever seen a topographic map with wavy lines going up a hillside, those are contour lines.
Where contour lines are close together, the terrain is steep. Where they are far apart, the terrain is flat. Contour lines never cross each other.
What Lidarvisor Generates
Lidarvisor generates two sets of contour lines:
- Major contour lines — spaced at a wider interval (e.g., every 5 meters), typically drawn with thicker lines and labeled with the elevation value. These give you the overall shape of the terrain.
- Minor contour lines — spaced at a narrower interval (e.g., every 1 meter), providing detail between the major lines.
You set the intervals when configuring processing. For example, Major = 500 cm (5 m) and Minor = 100 cm (1 m) means you will get a bold contour line every 5 meters with four thinner lines between each pair.
Choosing Intervals
| Terrain Type | Suggested Major | Suggested Minor |
|---|---|---|
| Flat terrain (less than 10 m elevation change) | 1 m | 0.25 m |
| Gently rolling hills | 5 m | 1 m |
| Hilly terrain | 10 m | 2 m |
| Mountainous terrain | 25 m | 5 m |
In the Viewer
Major and minor contour lines appear as separate layers in the project tree. You can toggle each independently to reduce visual clutter — for example, show only major contours for an overview, then add minor contours when you need detail.
Common Uses
- Topographic maps and survey deliverables
- Engineering site plans
- Flood zone delineation
- Landscape architecture
Elevation Grid
What It Is
An elevation grid is a regular pattern of points placed across your terrain model, each labeled with its elevation. Think of it as a net of evenly spaced dots, where each dot has a height value.
What You Configure
- Grid spacing (50 to 10,000 cm): The distance between points. A 500 cm (5 m) spacing means one elevation point every 5 meters in both directions.
Common Uses
- CAD spot elevation maps
- Volume calculations in engineering software
- Quick reference for terrain heights at regular positions
Breaklines
What They Are
Breaklines are 3D lines that follow abrupt changes in terrain slope — the top and bottom edges of embankments, ditch sides, terraces, banks, road shoulders, and field edges. On a traditional survey plan these are the lines a surveyor traces by hand over the hillshade, which is one of the most time-consuming steps of terrain drafting. Lidarvisor detects them automatically from your terrain model.
Each breakline carries elevation values along its length, so it can be used directly in terrain modeling software.
The Three Density Tiers
Terrain varies enormously in how many breaklines it contains — a flat field has a handful, a terraced vineyard has hundreds. Instead of a single all-or-nothing output, Lidarvisor delivers breaklines as three complementary layers:
| Layer | What It Adds | Best For |
|---|---|---|
| Main Breaklines | The most prominent, longest breaklines | First overview, clean cartography |
| Detailed Breaklines | Secondary features: short benches, internal terraces, field edges | Most survey and analysis work |
| Exhaustive Breaklines | All remaining detectable breaklines, including faint ones | Quality control; may include extra noise on flat terrain |
The three layers do not overlap — each denser tier only adds lines the previous tier does not already contain. The toggles are linked so you always see a coherent picture: turning on Detailed automatically turns on Main, and turning on Exhaustive turns on both. By default, Main and Detailed are enabled and Exhaustive is off.
In the Viewer
Breaklines render as cyan lines, with Main drawn thickest and Exhaustive thinnest so the structural lines always stand out.
Common Uses
- CAD linework for survey deliverables (embankments, ditches, terraces)
- Enforcing slope discontinuities when building a TIN or terrain model
- Hydrology and drainage analysis
- Volume and earthworks calculations
Cadastral Parcels
What They Are
Cadastral parcels are property boundary polygons fetched from your country's official open-data cadastre. This layer is different from every other vector output: it is not derived from your point cloud. It is reference data — the boundaries as published by the national land registry — overlaid on your survey so you can read your results against property lines.
What Each Parcel Contains
- Parcel reference — the official identifier of the parcel
- Area — the parcel area
- Source — which national service the data came from
No ownership information (names, addresses, titles) is ever fetched or delivered — only geometry, reference, and area.
Important: Indicative Boundaries Only
Cadastral boundaries are legal and fiscal records, not survey measurements. They routinely differ from the physical features your LiDAR survey measures by several meters, and this offset is a property of the source data, not an error in your survey. Use this layer for context — never as a boundary survey.
Coverage
Availability depends on your country and region: parcels are fetched automatically where a free, openly licensed cadastre service exists for your project area. If your area is not covered, processing completes normally and the layer is simply delivered empty.
The option is off by default — you opt in with a single checkbox, and Lidarvisor determines the correct data source from your project's location automatically.
In the Viewer
Parcels render as thin brown outlines with no fill, so they read as context and never obscure your surveyed features. This layer cannot be edited — it is a third-party record.
Common Uses
- Reading survey results against property boundaries
- Site plans and permitting documents
- Checking which parcels a project, corridor, or finding touches
Building Footprints
What They Are
Building footprints are polygons (outlines) of detected buildings as seen from above. Each polygon represents the boundary of one building's roof.
How They Are Created
- The AI identifies which points are classified as Building.
- Points are grouped into clusters — each cluster is one building.
- The outline of each cluster is extracted and simplified into a clean polygon.
Simplification Modes
You choose a simplification mode during processing:
- Rural — Produces simple, clean outlines with straight edges and right angles. Ideal for isolated houses, barns, and rural structures where buildings have simple shapes.
- Urban — Produces more detailed outlines that follow L-shaped, T-shaped, and other complex building footprints. Ideal for city centers with attached buildings and complex roof shapes.
- Natural — Follows the detected shape closely with minimal geometric correction. The outlines may look more organic and less "square."
What Each Building Polygon Contains
Each building footprint comes with attributes:
- Height — the estimated height of the building above the ground
- Area — the footprint area in square meters
- Elevation — the ground elevation at the building location
Common Uses
- Cadastral mapping and property boundaries
- Urban planning and zoning
- 3D city models (using height to extrude footprints)
- Insurance and risk assessment
Bridges
What They Are
Bridge vectors are polygons outlining the deck of each detected bridge — the road- or rail-carrying surface — drawn at the deck's elevation so they sit at the correct height in the 3D viewer.
How They Are Created
- The AI identifies points classified as Bridge Deck and groups them into one cluster per bridge.
- The bridge's parapet walls are located and measured to find the bridge's precise axis and width — the polygon stops at the inner face of the parapets, so it represents the usable deck.
- The deck length is extended over sections the classification missed (bridges are recognized in part by the void beneath them), producing a clean, oriented rectangle per bridge.
What Each Bridge Polygon Contains
- Length — the deck length along the bridge axis
- Width — the deck width between the parapets
- Deck elevation — the elevation of the deck surface
Classification Cleanup
When bridges are extracted, the result is also written back into the classified point cloud: points on the deck are relabeled as Bridge Deck, and parapet points as Fence / Wall — even where the AI originally missed them. See Understanding Your Results for how vector extraction refines the classification.
In the Viewer
Bridges render as light-brown filled polygons, visually distinct from buildings (red) and roads. Extraction is enabled by default.
Common Uses
- Infrastructure inventory and asset management
- Verifying that all expected bridges were surveyed
- Importing bridge footprints into GIS alongside roads and buildings
Roads
What They Are
Road vectors are lines that follow the edges of detected road surfaces.
How They Are Created
Lidarvisor uses an AI-powered image recognition approach to detect roads. It analyzes an overhead image of your project — the orthophoto you uploaded, or one generated automatically from the point cloud — identifies the road surfaces, and traces their edges as vector lines.
For best results, upload a high-resolution orthophoto (5 cm to 20 cm per pixel) with your project.
Modes
- Rural — Optimized for country roads, forest tracks, and simpler layouts.
- Urban — Optimized for paved streets, intersections, and complex road networks.
Note: Road extraction is currently a beta feature. Results may vary depending on road visibility in the data (roads under heavy tree canopy may not be fully detected).
Classification Cleanup
Ground points inside the detected road surfaces are relabeled as Road Surface in the classified point cloud, so the point cloud you download agrees with the road vectors.
Common Uses
- Road inventory and mapping
- Transportation planning
- Access route planning for forestry and utility maintenance
Rails
What They Are
Rail vectors are 3D lines that follow each individual rail of a railway track — the left and right rail of every track, traced as parallel lines at the standard track gauge.
How They Are Created
Lidarvisor locates railway corridors using openly available railway map data (OpenStreetMap), then precisely traces each rail on the overhead image of your project. The output lines are broken where the evidence disappears — for example, where a stopped train covers the track.
As with roads, uploading a high-resolution orthophoto (5 cm to 20 cm per pixel) is strongly recommended.
Note: Rail extraction is currently a beta feature, designed to accelerate linework productivity rather than replace a survey.
What Each Rail Line Contains
- Side — whether the line is the left or right rail of its track
- Track and segment identifiers — so the two rails of one track can be paired
- Length — the rail segment length
- Gauge — the rail spacing used
Classification Cleanup
The track corridor is relabeled as Rail in the classified point cloud. Where a railway crosses a road or a bridge, the rail classification wins on the track bed itself, while vegetation and wires above the track keep their own classes.
Common Uses
- Railway corridor inventory
- Track alignment linework for CAD
- Vegetation management along rail corridors
Water Bodies and Shorelines
Lidarvisor offers two independent water layers, selectable separately.
Water Body
Filled polygons of enclosed water surfaces — lakes, ponds, and reservoirs that lie entirely inside your surveyed area.
Shoreline
Open 3D lines along the land/water edge — river banks, canal edges, and coastline. Shorelines are deliberately left open where the water leaves the surveyed area: a river crossing your project has real banks but no closed outline, so forcing a polygon would draw a false bank across the survey edge. This is why a river produces shorelines rather than a water body polygon.
Every water vertex is placed at the detected water surface elevation, so the lines and polygons sit on the water in the 3D viewer.
How They Are Created
Water is detected on the overhead image of your project and then confirmed and grown against evidence in the point cloud itself. If your project has no orthophoto, you can allow Lidarvisor to use open-source satellite imagery of your area to seed the detection — uploading your own orthophoto gives the best results.
Note: Water extraction is currently a beta feature. Both layers are off by default.
Classification Cleanup
When water extraction runs, the classified point cloud is updated to match: points on the detected water surface are relabeled as Water, and stray "water" labels elsewhere in the project (the AI sometimes mistakes wet roads or dark roofs for water) are cleaned up. See Understanding Your Results for details.
Common Uses
- Flood mapping and hydraulic studies
- Hydrography layers for topographic plans
- Shoreline and bank monitoring
- Separating water returns from ground when deriving terrain
Tree Tops
What They Are
Tree top points represent the location and height of individual trees. Each detected tree is marked with a single point at its highest position.
What Each Point Contains
- Tree ID — a unique number identifying the tree
- Height — the tree's height above the ground in meters
- Position — X, Y coordinates (geographic position) and Z (elevation)
- Vegetation area ID — the identifier of the vegetation area the tree stands in (see Vegetation Areas), or 0 if it stands alone
How Trees Are Detected
Lidarvisor's algorithm analyzes the Canopy Height Model (CHM) and uses a watershed-based method to identify individual trees. It finds the peak (highest point) of each tree and records its position and height.
You can set the minimum tree height (default 4 m, adjustable from 2 to 10 m): anything shorter is not reported as an individual tree. Lower it for young plantations and orchards; raise it to count only mature stems.
Common Uses
- Counting trees across a large area
- Measuring tree heights for timber inventory
- Identifying the tallest trees (for clearance or risk assessment)
- Plantation row analysis
- Urban tree inventory
Tree Crowns
What They Are
Tree crown polygons represent the canopy boundary of individual trees — the outline of each tree as seen from above. Each polygon encircles one tree's leaf canopy.
What Each Polygon Contains
- Tree ID — a unique number matching the corresponding tree top
- Height — the tree's height above the ground
- Crown area — the area of the canopy in square meters
- Position — centroid coordinates
- Vegetation area ID — the identifier of the vegetation area the tree stands in, or 0 if it stands alone
Crown Geometry Setting
You choose how crowns are drawn in the viewer and in the exported files:
- Circle (default) — each crown as a circle of equivalent area (same crown radius). Cleaner and lighter, ideal for CAD deliverables.
- Polygon — the true canopy outline traced from the point cloud.
The choice does not change any measured value (area, crown radius, carbon). Detection sensitivity itself is automatic: Lidarvisor adapts it to the local canopy structure, so there is no sensitivity setting to tune.
In the Viewer
Tree crowns appear as colored polygons overlaid on the point cloud. Combined with tree tops, you can see both the location and the extent of each tree.
Common Uses
- Forest inventory — measuring canopy cover and density
- Individual tree analysis — crown competition, growth space
- Urban tree management — identifying trees that need pruning or removal
- Carbon estimation input (crown area correlates with biomass)
- Habitat assessment — canopy structure determines habitat suitability
Vegetation Areas
What They Are
Vegetation areas are generalized outlines of wooded areas — one polygon per wood or copse, traced at the outer crown edge, with large clearings kept as holes inside the polygon. This is how vegetation is drawn on a topographic plan: as a mass, not as thousands of individual circles. On a densely wooded site, this layer is what makes the plan readable.
Vegetation areas are independent of the per-tree layers: you can request them with or without Tree Tops and Tree Crowns. An isolated tree is not an area — it is delivered as a point in Tree Tops.
How They Are Created
The outlines are derived directly from the Canopy Height Model rather than from individual tree detection, which makes them robust: a missed tree top cannot punch a hole in the wooded outline. The layer uses the same minimum tree height as tree detection, so one definition of "vegetation" applies across your whole project.
What Each Area Contains
- Nature —
closed_wood,open_wood, orcopse: areas of 5,000 m² or more are woods (closed if canopy cover is at least 40%, open otherwise); smaller areas are copses - Area, perimeter, width, length — the polygon's dimensions
- Canopy cover — the percentage of the area actually covered by canopy
- Height statistics — mean, maximum, and 95th-percentile canopy height, plus the height floor used
- Tree count and density — the number of detected tree tops inside the area and stems per hectare (when tree detection also ran)
In the Viewer
Vegetation areas render as a light, translucent green — deliberately lighter than the tree-crown green, so the mass reads as background and the crowns as detail when both are displayed together. The option is off by default.
Common Uses
- Topographic plans with standard vegetation symbology
- Delineating woods, copses, and stands for forestry
- Lightweight CAD deliverables for wooded sites
- Stand-level statistics (cover, height, density)
Power Lines
What They Are
Power line vectors are 3D lines that follow the cables of overhead power lines. Each line segment represents one wire span between two poles or towers, including the natural curve (catenary sag) of the cable.
What You Also Get
When you enable power line extraction, you can also enable several analysis layers:
Buffer Zones (up to 3)
A buffer zone is a band of a specific width centered on the power lines. Any vegetation found within this band is flagged. You can define up to three zones with different widths to represent different risk levels:
- Zone 1 (e.g., 5 m) — immediate proximity, highest risk
- Zone 2 (e.g., 10 m) — moderate proximity, medium risk
- Zone 3 (e.g., 20 m) — broader monitoring zone
Clearance Zone
The clearance zone identifies vegetation that is too close to the power lines. You define a minimum safe distance, and any tree or vegetation closer than that distance is flagged. This is essential for regulatory compliance.
Right-of-Way Zone (ROW)
The right-of-way zone flags vegetation inside a flat horizontal corridor of a chosen half-width on each side of the line axis, regardless of height. This answers a different question from the buffer and clearance zones: those measure electrical proximity to the conductor in 3D, while the ROW measures presence inside the legal corridor a utility is obliged to keep clear (the right-of-way in North America, franja de seguridad in Chile).
A low bush 4 m off-axis under a 20 m-high line is far from the conductor in 3D — the buffer and clearance modes correctly ignore it — but it is inside the corridor, so the ROW mode flags it. The default half-width is 15 m (adjustable from 1 to 50 m); the tooltip in the app lists reference values per voltage class.
Tree Fall Risk
The tree fall risk layer identifies trees that are tall enough to hit a power line if they were to fall over. Lidarvisor checks: "Is this tree taller than its distance to the nearest wire?" If yes, it is flagged as a fall risk.
Findings in the Viewer and in Your Downloads
Each analysis you enable produces its own vector layer, grouped under Encroachment Findings in the project tree: Buffer Zone 1, Buffer Zone 2, Buffer Zone 3, Clearance Zone, Right-of-Way Zone, and Fallen Tree Risk. Every flagged vegetation cluster is drawn as a polygon draped on the terrain, color-coded by severity:
| Layer | Color |
|---|---|
| Buffer Zone 1 | Red (closest tier — immediate hazard) |
| Buffer Zone 2 | Orange |
| Buffer Zone 3 | Yellow |
| Clearance Zone | Magenta |
| Right-of-Way Zone | Cyan (broadest area, lowest opacity) |
| Fallen Tree Risk | Dark red |
Click any finding in the viewer to see its details: cluster ID, number of points, area, volume, distance to the wire, and the wire ID.
Each findings layer is downloadable in the standard three formats (GeoJSON, Shapefile, DXF). The finding attributes also include the closest conductor position (X, Y, Z), the 3D distance to the conductor, the wire ID (which matches the wire ID in the power line export, so the two files can be joined), and the detection type — so you can import findings straight into your own GIS or asset-management system without recomputing anything. The same information appears in the spreadsheet (CSV) files delivered with the vegetation encroachment report.
Common Uses
- Power line corridor inspection
- Vegetation management planning
- Regulatory compliance (NERC FAC-003 and similar standards)
- Legal right-of-way clearing programs
- Post-storm damage assessment priorities
- Utility asset inventory
Towers
What They Are
Tower vectors represent the locations and shapes of transmission towers, pylons, and poles detected in the point cloud.
What Each Tower Contains
- Position — geographic coordinates
- Orientation — the direction the tower faces
- Geometry — a simplified outline of the tower's footprint
Common Uses
- Utility infrastructure inventory
- Asset management databases
- Tower inspection planning
- Telecom site analysis
Viewing Vectors in the 3D Viewer
All vector layers appear in the project tree in the left panel after processing. To view them:
- Check the checkbox next to the layer name to make it visible.
- The vectors will appear overlaid on the point cloud in the 3D viewer.
- You can show multiple vector layers at the same time.
A layer that ran but legitimately found nothing (for example, water extraction on a dry site, or cadastral parcels outside coverage) appears in the tree marked as empty — this is normal, not an error.
Combining Layers
Some powerful combinations:
| Combination | Why It Is Useful |
|---|---|
| Contour lines + DTM hillshade | Classic topographic map visualization |
| Contour lines + breaklines | Complete terrain linework for a survey plan |
| Building footprints + classified point cloud | Verify building detection accuracy |
| Cadastral parcels + building footprints | See structures relative to property boundaries |
| Tree crowns + tree tops | See both tree locations and canopy boundaries |
| Vegetation areas + tree crowns | Schematic vegetation mass with per-tree detail on top |
| Power lines + encroachment findings | Full utility vegetation management view, severity color-coded |
| Water body + shoreline + DTM hillshade | Hydrography overview of the site |
| Contour lines + buildings + roads | Comprehensive site overview |
| Bridges + roads + rails | Complete transportation infrastructure view |
Downloading Vectors
All vector layers can be downloaded individually from the project tree. Click the download button next to any vector layer, then choose your format:
- GeoJSON — in WGS84 coordinates (latitude/longitude), compatible with web maps and most GIS tools
- DXF — in the original projected coordinate system, compatible with CAD software
- Shapefile — in the original projected coordinate system, compatible with GIS tools
See Downloading and Exporting for more details.
Next Step
Let's look at the report outputs. Head to Reports.