3D Analyst extension

The 3D Analyst extension in ArcGIS Pro 2.7/2.8 is used to perform 3D analysis. It enables many analysis tasks to be performed on 3D data and surfaces, including area and volume calculations, conversion of 2D features to 3D, 3D proximity analysis, visibility, skyline, silhouette, and sunshade analyses.

Sunshade analysis is frequently used in right-to-light studies, and in the estimation of urban heat island effects.

Surface analysis tools can create derived products such as slope, curvature, aspect, and contour lines. Other tools can build TIN, terrain, and LAS datasets. A Digital Elevation Model raster can be extracted from LAS data.

This extension includes deep learning tools which can be used to classify LIDAR point cloud data. It can prepare training data from point cloud data, train a classification model, and classify the data using the trained model. For example, a trained model can be created to detect objects such as powerlines from point cloud data. A common use of this tool is to perform vegetation encroachment studies for electrical transmission lines.

Other uses of these tools include well-bore analysis for the oil and gas industry and calculating the volume and height of stockpiles in the mining industry. Many common tasks, such as visibility, line-of-site, view dome, and viewshed analyses can be performed interactively. Other tasks can be automated with geoprocessing tools.

Ground source

A ground source is an elevation surface used to provide reference Z-values for 2D features added to a 3D scene. For example, a ground source elevation surface is used to define reference elevations for content in rasterized layers and “on-ground” symbol features in vector layers.

Space-time cubes

Space-time cubes are 3D models used to analyze data across both space and time. These cubes can be used to mine for patterns over space and time. They are used to find outliers, identify clusters in time-series data, generate hot-spot analyses, and create temporal forecasts.

Triangulated Irregular Networks (TIN)

Using a TIN to define a scene’s elevation source enables vector precision which offers the advantage of modeling 3D features more sharply.