ReachRS and Volumetric measurements

Hi all,

i do use ReachRS to do Point Stakeout at my Construction site here in Austria. This works exceptionally well. But i do also have a quarry, where i’d like to measure Volume of Stock Piles. What would be the best practice to Calculate the Volume if i get a set of points.

I have tried Meshlab but didn’t really have any luck in Importing the coordinates. Any ideas?

so far,
Ferdinand

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QGis, but you will have a steep learning curve.

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@axp,

What software/app are you using with Reach RS to do the Point Stakeout?

Thanks!

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Topographer Pro

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Hi Ferdinand,

Do you have an elevation model already?
Or just set of points?

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Hi, unfortunately i only have a set of points.

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Is it confidential or you could share a set?

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I will gather some data today and post it here.

so far,
Ferdinand

here are the files.

Maybe someone has a Guide how to accomplish “simple” Volume measurement.
Volume-ESRI_Shapefile.zip (2.1 KB)
Volume-GeoJSON.zip (1.6 KB)
Volume-DXF.zip (4.1 KB)

Maybe look at Global Mapper, which is free to try. Import you points, mesh, define the area and calculate your volume. I do this with my UAV lidar points…

Do you know the actual size of the area?

Does 295 m3 looks like something similar?

Yes this should be ok.

How did you calculate it?

l’ll write down QGIS procedure order. That’s not the fastest and right way to do this, because it’s much easier to in GRASS or ArcGIS, but I didn’t want to install it :slight_smile:.

  1. Build isohypses with contour plugin and extract points from isohypses.
    I’ve done this, because you’ve got really small area and number of points. It cause problems with IDW building in QGIS.

  2. Use IDW to build raster DEM.

  3. Make polygon out of smallest isohypse to cover your area and cut raster by this polygon.

  4. Build vector grid that is align with raster grid. Now you know the real ellipsoid size of your raster cell.

From this point you could calculate volume by hands, because your area is quite small. Just times cell area on Z value of the cell and sum results.
If you want to automate the process, you could do the following:

  • Use raster value to point tool to give raster cell value to each vector cell and work with this layer to calculate volume.
  • Use zonal statistic plugin if you don’t want square grid cells cover. Just like here. (It’s nice tutorial by the way)
  • Create raster layer with minimum Z value all over it. Write python script to subtract your raster grid from this “0 level” layer and calculate volume. Just like here.

P.S. I also should notice, that if you want to do volume calculation quite frequently, try to find out more about GRASS tools. It has MUCH more instruments for that kind of operations.

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+1 with Grass GIS.
Also note that idw is not the best method to make volume computation. CAD users use TIN aka delaunay triangulation, it’s possible to do same thing in grass.

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@Sylvain_POULAIN Yes, I agree that TIN is the right way, but with small amount of points (such in this data package) it’s hard to get good result with it.

@axp You could make 1st step and after that use TIN, no problem.

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hi did you try to connect Reach to Global Mapper for navigation? I am trying to do this and for some reason is not working. Connected per Bluetooth and it says Acquiring Sats but nothing. Would appreciate any help.
thanks
jan