ASTM E57 Reader/Writer

FME can read and write data in the E57 format. The E57 file format is a compact, vendor-neutral format for storing point clouds, images, and metadata produced by 3D imaging systems, such as laser scanners.

A single E57 file may contain any number of point clouds and rasters.

ASTM E57 Product and System Requirements

Format

Platform

Operating System

Reader/Writer

FME Desktop License

FME Server

FME Cloud

Windows 64-bit

Linux

Mac

Reader

Available in FME Professional Edition and higher

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Writer

Available in FME Professional Edition and higher

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Overview

E57 files are structured as a tree. A path is a string that specifies the sequence of element names when traversing the tree.

Point cloud data is read from path /data3D. Raster data is read from path /images2D.

An E57 file may contain attributes and geometry traits. Elements at the root of the tree are treated as attributes, e.g. /guid. Elements within a geometry node will be treated as geometry traits, e.g. /data3D/0/points/guid.

Note: All features will share the same attributes, but traits will differ per feature.

Reader Overview

FME considers a single E57 file to be a dataset. Each dataset contains one or more point cloud and raster features.

Writer Overview

FME considers a dataset to be a folder name. The feature type of each dataset is the filename.

Raster

Each image node (for example, /images2D/0/) contains a raster. These images may be stored as one of four representations:

  • visualReferenceRepresentation
  • pinholeRepresentation
  • sphericalRepresentation
  • cylindricalRepresentation

The representation type controls which additional properties are stored (see ASTM E57 Feature Representation for more details).

Note: One image node may actually contain two rasters: one of the set { pinholeRepresentation, sphericalRepresentation, or cylindricalRepresentation}, and one visualReferenceRepresentation node. In this case, the reader will produce an aggregate geometry that holds both rasters. Similarly, the writer can ingest aggregates of two rasters.

Note: Raster data is stored within an E57 file as PNG or JPEG blobs.

An image mask may optionally be stored separately from the image data. When reading, FME will combine the image mask and data into a single raster.