=== Q: How do I convert between LAS and ASCII file formats? ===

To convert between LAS and ASCII formats use the free `las2txt` and `txt2las` available as part of LAStools available to download from: https://github.com/LAStools/LAStools (note: download also contains paid for tools not required for conversion). Binaries are provided for Windows. For Linux and OS X you need to compile using the included 'Makefile'

==== LAS to ASCII ====

To export as 9 column ASCII files, as delivered by ARSF between 2011 and 2015 use the following command:

{{{
las2txt -parse txyzicrna -sep space -i in_las.las -o out_ascii.txt
}}}

If you need to export in the 8 column format used by ARSF between 2009 and 2010 use the following command instead:

{{{
las2txt -parse txyzicrna -sep space -i in_las.las -o out_ascii.txt
}}}

For more details on available options see the [https://github.com/LAStools/LAStools/blob/master/bin/las2txt_README.txt las2txt README]

==== ASCII to LAS ====

To convert the 9 column ASCII files as delivered by ARSF between 2011 and 2015 to LAS format use the following command:

{{{
txt2las -iparse txyzicrna -i in_ascii.txt -o out_las.las
}}}

To convert the 8 column format used by ARSF between 2009 and 2010 use the following command instead:

{{{
txt2las -iparse txyzicra -i in_ascii.txt -o out_las.las
}}}

To reduce the file size you can change the extension of the output file to '.laz' to save as LASzip files. These can be read by a number of packages and easily converted back to uncompressed LAS files using [https://github.com/LAStools/LAStools/blob/master/bin/laszip_README.txt laszip].

If you are accessing ARSF archive data LAStools are available on [http://jasmin.ac.uk/ JASMIN] and can be loaded using:

{{{
module load contrib/arsf/lastools/20150925
}}}

Allowing data to be converted to LAS/LAZ format before downloading. 

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