Below is the command line that creates a 10 by 8 isocontour tiling from the 357 LAS files that are a subset of http://www.wvview.org/data/lidar/Gilmer/las/Last/ and that are listed in the 'gilmer.files' file: spfinalize -i gilmer.files -lof -ilas -level 8 -ospb | spdelaunay2d -ispb -osmb | tin2iso -ismb -range 200 450 10 -oslb | slclean -islb -oslb -length 5 | slsimp -islb -oslb -area 0.7 | sl2sl -islb -okml -tiling_nllsxy gilmer 500000 4302000 2000 10 8 -utm 17S -ellipsoid 23 The first module 'spfinalize.exe' reads the points from a list of files (-lof) in 'gilmer.files' that are expected to be in LAS 1.x format (-ilas), finalizes them on a 256x256 grid (-level 8), and outputs them in a streaming binary point format (-ospb) to the second module. The second module 'spdelaunay2d' reads the points in streaming binary format (-ispb) as they are produced by the finalizer and Delaunay triangulates them with the streaming algorithm described in SIGGAPH 2006. It immediately starts to output the triangulation in a binary streaming mesh format (-osmb) and pipes it to the third module. The third module 'tin2iso.exe' reads a triangulation in a binary streaming mesh format (-ismb) as it is produced by the streaming triangulator, extracts elevation contours every 10 units (here: meter) between 200 and 450 (-range 200 450 10) and outputs the resulting lines in a binary streaming line format (-oslb) to the fourth module. The fourth module 'slclean.exe' reads the contours in a binary streaming line format (-islb) as they are produced by the extractor, discards all contours that are shorter than 5 units (here: meter) (-length 5), and outputs others as soon as their length is determined as being above the cutoff in a binary streaming line format (-oslb) to the fifth module. The fifth module 'slsimp.exe' reads the contours in a binary streaming line format (-islb) as they are output by the cleaner, removes all 'bumps' (i.e. pairs of two subsequent line segments) that have less than 0.7 square units (here: square meter) in area (-area 0.7), and outputs the simplified contours in a binary streaming line format (-oslb) to the sixth module. The sixth module 'sl2sl.exe' reads the contours in a binary streaming line format (-islb) as output by the simplifier and tiles them into X=0..9 by y=0..7 separate files called gilmer_00x_00y.kml with (500000,4302000) being the lower left corner of the tiling and with each tile being 2000 units (here: meters) long and wide (-tiling_nllsxy gilmer 500000 4302000 2000 10 8); each tile is stored in Google's KML format (-okml). KML uses a longitude [degree], latitude [degree], elevation [meter] representation we need meta data to convert the LIDAR data to a correctly georeferenced representation. The LIDAR data was in UTM format and we specify 17S as the zone (-utm 17S) and WGS-84 as the ellipsoid (-ellipsoid 23). -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Below is the command line that creates a 19 by 21 raster DEM tiling of 1000 meter (500 pixel) tiles from 16 files that are listed in saint_helens.files and that contain a total of 58 million LIDAR points and that are provided here: http://wagda.lib.washington.edu/data/type/elevation/lidar/st_helens/toutle03.html spfinalize -i saint_helens.files -ilof -ilas -ospb -level 8 | spdelaunay2d -ispb -osmb | tin2dem -ismb -opng -zone 10S -ellipse 23 -step 2 -kill 1000 -tiling_ns saint_helens 500 -ll 553000 5110000 The first module 'spfinalize.exe' reads the points from a list of files (-lof) in 'gilmer.files' that are expected to be in LAS 1.x format (-ilas), finalizes them on a 256x256 grid (-level 8), and outputs them in a streaming binary point format (-ospb) to the second module. The second module 'spdelaunay2d' reads the points in streaming binary format (-ispb) as they are produced by the finalizer and Delaunay triangulates them with the streaming algorithm described in SIGGAPH 2006. It immediately starts to output the triangulation in a binary streaming mesh format (-osmb) and pipes it to the third module. The third module 'tin2dem.exe' reads the triangulation in a binary streaming mesh format (-ismb) as output by the delaunay triangulator and rasters from the given lower left corner (-ll 553000 5110000) into separate tiles of 500 pixel in size that are called saint_helens_0xx_0yy.kml (-tiling_ns saint_helens 500) with each pixel corresponding to two units (-step 2) and stores them in PNG format (-opng). The accompanying KML file uses a longitude [degree], latitude [degree], elevation [meter] representation. The meta data to convert the LIDAR data to a correctly georeferenced representation is UTM zone 17S (-utm 17S) and the WGS-84 ellipsoid (-ellipsoid 23).