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I'm determining tree heights from LiDAR point cloud data in Cloud Compare, but I'd like to import the data into QGIS or Google Earth. Simply saving the rasterized cloud as a .shp file in Cloud Compare then uploading into QGIS produces this error "Cloud.shp is not a valid or recognized data source." Does anyone have any (preferably open-source) solutions to do this correctly?

Vince
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Brian Allen
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    What format is your LiDAR data in currently? Depending upon format, there may be a number of different plugins/toolkits to enable loading into QGIS without going to SHP first. – Saijin_Naib Dec 26 '19 at 18:16
  • The raw LiDAR data is uploaded into Cloud Compare as a .laz file. I then have to Rasterize it to make it useable, which generates a new file in CloudCompare. I assume it's also a .laz file. – Brian Allen Dec 26 '19 at 20:00
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    You can use Fusion and lastools plugins for QGIS to load LAZ data. Conversely, you can also convert from LAZ to another format using PDAL. You shouldn't need to rasterize the data first (and I doubt the rasterized data is stored as LAZ as LAZ is a text-based format for storing points, more likely some form of geoTIFF). – Saijin_Naib Dec 26 '19 at 20:01
  • If you want to use Google Earth just to see where the data is located, then just use QGIS' XYZ tiles from the browser to overlay the data. The following thread might give you pointers: https://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/19338/viewing-lidar-data-las-in-qgis – GforGIS Dec 27 '19 at 02:13
  • Are you familiar with R at all? I do this sort of analysis in R using the package 'lidR'. You can generate a suite of raster and vector products with minimal coding. If you are interested I can share some sample code. – Kartograaf Dec 27 '19 at 02:17

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The newest version of qgis is able to load and view las and laz files, which you can just drag and drop into the contents pane on the left.

For me its unclear how a rasterized pointcloud results in a shapefile. It would make more sense to use a raster format such as dsm/dtm geotiff (correct me if I am overlooking some of the steps you took to make it in a shapefile). My suggestion would be to try another format then .shp, or direclty upload the lidar data into qgis and look into rapidlasso for doing the comparison of tree heights.

Nienke
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