WinEx Master

Apologies for the total DD newbie question. Am new to drone mapping and DD but have read much of the on-line learning resources. Searched the forum and internet for answers to this question without much success.

Am collaborating with a small/mid-sized grading contractor to evaluate drone mapping to update elevations and volumes on a 20 acre grading site. Have started an initial Business level subscription to DD, planned the flight mission, flown a capture, uploaded the photos, and run the project through the 3 processing steps. Have only 3 tie points in this initial run, two of which are manual. (Will be running another capture next week with a global shutter camera and with GCP’s).

The grading contractor is using WinEX Master for his site modeling. The on-line literature says WinEX Master imports “from all versions of AutoCAD files including DWG and open source DXF files and, our Vector Direct utility will import from pdf files containing vector layers.”

What DD file(s) will we need to update his model? I’ll be meeting with him this coming week and would prefer to bring what he can use rather than just bringing all the files and formats that DD can export.

Again – apologies for the total newcomer question. Thanks for any help you can provide
… R

You can do (GeoTIFF, DEM, DXF, SHP), DTM, Point Cloud, PDF, 3D Model.

You’re going to have to use the elevation DXF at 1ft contours on the correct projection that they need. Unfortunately you’re probably going to have to just do the import and see if it lines up as there is no real way to ensure that what DroneDeploy is exporting will line up with what they have.

I’ve found that the DTM contours in DXF work well, although I normally use the DTM point cloud (xyz) for surface construction. You can then clean up the data by deleting points that represent objects like loaders and people and create a surface from the clean data if you have the software. Although the DTM is supposed to provide bare earth data, there are always a few problems.

One issue that does come up when working with engineering files is that the drone data are much more precise - 1000s of points vs 10s. My last project was rejected because of “issues” when compared with old topography.

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Thanks, All. Very helpful information.

Been doing lots of study trying to get up to speed on all the combinations of exports possible in DD. Have an increased appreciation of why so many drone mappers seem to have started in surveying instead of RC flying. A local drone mapper who’s helping me along described all this as " a really deep rabbit hole". WhoDaThunkIt that there are whole college PhD programs in GIS. I’ve had to reach back a ways to brush up on basics like raster files vs vector files, projection standards to get from 3D to 2D, compare/contrast different drone mapping apps, etc.

I dug into the user manual of WinEX Master, and MIchaelL’s reply above is on target with instructions for updating their template (another special-use term in this field).

I think I’ve got everything I need from the question I opened the thread with, so i’m gonna call “Thanks” to all who pitched in, and keep moving with other pieces of this journey. Thanks… R

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