Stockpile Volume and Average Elevation Question

I recently signed a monthly stockpile volume agreement for a local paper mill.  They’ll need the following information for each pile in addition to the volume and area:

 

  • Minimum elevation
  • Average elevation
  • Maximum elevation
  • Average height

 

What would be the easiest methods for obtaining these in Pix4D?

Hello Mark, 

This is a functionality that is not yet present in the software, but you can check the following workaround: 

You could assign the points of your stockpile to a new point group (say my_stockpile). You can then export this point group in .xyz format (only the my_stockpile point group). This should not be too large and you should be able to open this file in a spreadsheet application to compute max, min and avg. This will be for the altitude. For the height, you can subtract the altitude of the base plane. 

Helpful articles to do this are:

https://support.pix4d.com/hc/en-us/articles/202560499

https://support.pix4d.com/hc/en-us/articles/203890769

Alternatively, you could export the volume object as a shapefile. You could then load the DSM and use this shapefile to define a region in a GIS software such as QGIS. You could then use the raster analysis capabilities of QGIS to obtain the desired statistics. 

See herehow to export volumes.

Best Regards, 

Actually, I don’t have .xyz as an extension option when exporting a volume.  Only .shp, .dxf, .dgn, and .kml

Has the .xyz export option been removed from from the volume export feature?

 

Dear Mark,

When exporting a volume object, only the 2D information is exported, and you are correct that these formats are the ones that are supported. 

However, we were suggesting something slightly different. What you could do is edit the point cloud, assign the points of the stockpile to a new point group (let’s say my_stockpile), and export this point group. This way, only the points of my_stockpile would be exported, which would make the exported file much smaller. We refer to the links in the previous replies for the exact procedure how to do this. 

Best regards,