This tool can be used to create a vector polygon of the bounding box or convex hull of a LiDAR point cloud (i.e. LAS file). If the user specified an input file (`input`) and output file (`output`), the tool will calculate the footprint, containing all of the data points, and output this feature to a vector polygon file. If the `input` and `output` parameters are left unspecified, the tool will calculate the footprint of every LAS file contained within the working directory and output these features to a single vector polygon file. If this is the desired mode of operation, it is important to specify the working directory (`wd`) containing the group of LAS files; do not specify the optional `input` and `output` parameters in this case. Each polygon in the output vector will contain a `LAS_NM` field, specifying the source LAS file name, a `NUM_PNTS` field, containing the number of points within the source file, and Z_MIN and Z_MAX fields, containing the minimum and maximum elevations. This output can therefore be useful to create an index map of a large tiled LiDAR dataset.

By default, this tool identifies the axis-aligned minimum rectangular hull, or bounding box, containing the points in each of the input tiles. If the user specifies the `hull` flag, the tool will identify the minimum convex hull instead of the bounding box. This option is considerably more computationally intensive and will be a far longer running operation if many tiles are specified as inputs.

A note on LAZ file inputs: While WhiteboxTools does not currently support the reading and writing of the compressed LiDAR format `LAZ`, it is able to read `LAZ` file headers. This tool, when run in in the bounding box mode (rather than the convex hull mode), is able to take `LAZ` input files.

lidar_tile, `LayerFootprint`, minimum_bounding_box, minimum_convex_hull

## Function Signature

`def lidar_tile_footprint(self, input_lidar: Optional[Lidar], output_hulls: bool = False) -> Vector: ...`

## Project Links

WbW Homepage User Manual Support WbW