The practice of binning point data to form a type of 2D histogram, density plot, or what is sometimes called a heatmap, is quite useful as an alternative for the cartographic display of of very dense points sets. This is particularly the case when the points experience significant overlap at the displayed scale. The lidar_point_density tool can be used to perform binning based on a regular grid (raster output). This tool, by comparison, bases the binning on a hexagonal grid.

The tool is similar to the `CreateHexagonalVectorGrid` tool, however instead will create an output hexagonal grid in which each hexagonal cell possesses a `COUNT` attribute which specifies the number of points from an input points file (LAS file) that are contained within the hexagonal cell. The tool will also calculate the minimum and maximum elevations and intensity values and outputs these data to the attribute table.

In addition to the names of the input points file and the output Shapefile, the user must also specify the desired hexagon width (w), which is the distance between opposing sides of each hexagon. The size (s) each side of the hexagon can then be calculated as, s = w / [2 x cos(PI / 6)]. The area of each hexagon (A) is, A = 3s(w / 2). The user must also specify the orientation of the grid with options of horizontal (pointy side up) and vertical (flat side up).

## See Also

vector_hex_binning, lidar_point_density, `CreateHexagonalVectorGrid`

## Function Signature

`def lidar_hex_bin(self, input_lidar: Lidar, width: float, orientation: str = "h") -> Vector: ...`

## Project Links

WbW Homepage User Manual Support WbW