To create a plugin, one must have their own build of ParaView3. Binaries downloaded from www.paraview.org do not include the necessary header files or import libraries (where applicable) for compiling plug-ins. More information on writing ParaView plugins can be found here.
The build process to compile and run the LAS plugin for ParaView is defined by three steps: 1) Building ParaView, 2) Building libLAS and 3) Building the LAS plugin.
Download the ParaView 3.14.1 source tarball and follow the build instructions to compile ParaView. First, unpack the tarball, i.e.,
$ tar xvfz ParaView-3.14.1-Source.tar.gz
$ cd ParaView-3.14.1-Source
Then, create a Build directory and call ccmake to enter a graphical user interface for changing cmake variables. Alternatively, you can also set the variables on the command line.
$ mkdir Build
$ cd Build
$ ccmake ..
Note: Make sure that BUILD_SHARED_LIBS is set to ON (default is OFF). Hitting 'c' followed by 'g' will configure and generate all files for the build process. Running
$ make
will build ParaView as well as all the submodules (such as VTK). Optionally, you can specify -jN, e.g., make -j4 to speed up the compilation process by using more cores.
To add support for LASzip compressed data, download the LASzip 2.1.0 source tarball. To compile LASzip, unpack the tarball, i.e.,
tar xvfz laszip-2.1.0.tar.gz
cd laszip-2.1.0
Next, create a build directory and call ccmake to enter a graphical user interface for changing cmake variables. Alternatively, you can also set the variables on the command line.
$ mkdir build
$ cd build
$ ccmake ..
Hitting 'c' followed by 'g' will configure and generate all files for the build process. Running
$ make
$ make install
will build LASzip and install it on your system.
Download the libLAS 1.7.0 source tarball and follow the build instructions to compile libLAS. First, unpack the tarball, i.e.,
$ tar xvfz libLAS-1.7.0.tar.gz
$ cd libLAS-1.7.0
For now, we assume the user has the following libLAS dependencies installed.
- Boost 1.38.0
- GDAL 1.7.0
- libgeotiff 1.3.0
Although these are the published requirements, we tested with Boost 1.49.0 and trunk versions of GDAL and libgeotiff.
Next, create a build directory and call ccmake to enter a graphical user interface for changing cmake variables. Alternatively, you can also set the variables on the command line.
$ mkdir build
$ cd build
$ ccmake ..
Note: Make sure that WITH_GDAL and WITH_GEOTIFF are set to ON (default is OFF). If building with optional LASzip support, also set WITH_LASZIP to ON (default is OFF).
Hitting 'c' followed by 'g' will configure and generate all files for the build process. Running
$ make
$ make install
will build libLAS and install it on your system.
With ParaView and libLAS compiled, we are ready to build the plugin. First, obtain the source from GitHub. Then, create a Build directory and run ccmake, i.e.,
$ mkdir Build
$ cd Build
$ ccmake ..
Make sure to set the ParaView_DIR cmake variable to
$ ParaView_DIR <FullPathToParaViewSource>/ParaView-3.14.1-Source/Build
Hit 'c' and 'g' to configurate and generate. Alternatively, you can set all on the command line by
$ cmake -DParaView_DIR=<FullPathToParaViewSource>/ParaView-3.14.1-Source/Build ..
Running
$ make
will compile the plugin and make it available for use within ParaView.
Now that we have built the plugin, we are ready to import it in ParaView. First, start ParaView
$ cd <FullPathToParaViewSource>/ParaView-3.14.1-Source/Build
$ bin/paraview
Then, go to Tools/Manage Plugins. Press the Load New... button and navigate to ParaView's ParaView/Build/bin directory. Navigate to the Build/bin directory where you unpacked the plugin and select libvtkLASReader.so to load. You might also want to enable Auto Load so that the plugin gets automatically loaded. You should now be ready to use the LAS Plugin in ParaView.