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Q: How do I convert between LAS and ASCII file formats?
To convert between LAS and ASCII formats use the free las2txt and txt2las tools available as part of LAStools. These are 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 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 laszip.
If you are accessing ARSF archive data LAStools are available on JASMIN and can be loaded using:
module load contrib/arsf/lastools/20150925
Allowing data to be converted to LAS/LAZ format before downloading.