Welcome to the 3DF Zephyr tutorial series.

In the following tutorial we will learn how to get a DEM – digital elevation model – and to draw profiles starting from that.

These tools are available for 3DF Zephyr Pro and Aerial versions only.

You are supposed to generate an orthophoto before running DEM generation, so click on Tools > Orthophoto and orthomosaic > Generate orthophoto.

You are allowed to choose if either exploiting control points or axis method, then just click on Next button. Afterwards check the Export section into the orthophoto settings window and activate the Export DEM file option (see image below).

 

After clicking on Generate orthophoto button simply choose a file name and format as well as the file destination.

As soon as the computation is completed the DEM viewer will appear automatically. It allows to see the DEM you have just created directly inside 3DF Zephyr (see image below).

 

DEM viewer can be run whenever by clicking on Utilities > DEM viewer in the menu bar of 3DF Zephyr, and it can be exploited to:

– load DEM files (even those not related to the project you are working on) by clicking on File > Open;

– place contour lines on DEM if they have been previously generated in 3DF Zephyr, by clicking on View > Show Contour Lines;

– export DEM as a image format (.png, .jpg, .bmp);

 

PROFILE GENERATION

In the DEM Viewer it is also possible to run a Profile generation in order to draw one or more polylines directly on DEM and getting then their altimetric profile.

To to draw a polyline on DEM you simply click on Profile > Enable Picking in the DEM viewer window. By drawing one or more polylines on DEM you will notice that each vertex will be identified by a number (see image below).

 

Once all polyline vertices are placed you can click on Profile > Show info and you can check the tab Points, where each vertex of the polyline is listed, and the tab Profile as well, where you can see the altimetric profile of the polyline (see image below).

Moreover, by moving the cursor you can see the quote of every single profile point in detail.

 

You can also export a profile (pdf format) by clicking on Export > Profile Report.

 

The next tutorial will explain the coded target generation and automatic detection. Click here to proceed to the next tutorial.