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ENVI LiDAR 5.1 Release Notes

Change request ID numbers are included where applicable to allow us to respond to inquiries more easily.

New Features

The following are new features in ENVI LiDAR 5.1.
  • The ENVI LiDAR version number has been incremented to 5.1 for this release, to align ENVI LiDAR version numbering with ENVI's.
  • New Viewshed Analysis properties have been added for observer direction, which can be useful when the observer point has field-of-view restrictions.
  • Viewshed Analysis now includes range ring settings which enable you to show range rings, and to set the intervals at which to mark them.
  • New sample code has been added to the Toolbox extensions.
    • The Calculate Forest Density sample code shows how to process LiDAR data to classify points as vegetation, then create rasters for vegetation density and canopy height that can be opened and viewed in ENVI.
    • The Reproject LAS File sample code shows how to reproject points from a LAS or LAZ file to a new LAS file.
  • You can temporarily color point features of the area visible in the Main window. The previous two options allowed you to color the values based on point frequency and the LAS file source ID. Additional new options are:
    • Surface normal: Colors points by a unit vector perpendicular to the surface.
    • Classification values: Colors points by classifications computed outside of ENVI LiDAR.
    • Laser return number: colors a point based on its return number, for example, all first return points have one color, all second return points have another color, and so on, to a maximum of four.
  • LAZ files are supported as file input.
  • ENVI LiDAR Help now displays in your system's default web browser. The Help conforms to the HTML5 web specification and requires an HTML5-compatible browser. For details on each feature, refer to the ENVI LiDAR Help.

Known Issues

ID Description
LIDAR-68584 Launch Generated Products in ArcMap fails when launching a new instance of ArcMap 10.1 or 10.2
If you Launch Generated Products in ArcMap in ArcMap 10.1 or 10.2 and ArcMap is not already running, or if you choose "Start a New Instance," then the products appear in the ArcMap layer manager, but do not display in the main view.

Workaround: Launch ArcMap from the Start menu before selecting Launch Products in ArcMap. When prompted choose to open the products in the already running instance of ArcMap.
LIDAR-68707 Launch IDL Workbench in Windows 8.0 requires using compatibility mode
In Windows 8.0, the IDL Workbench does not launch when you select it from the File menu, or if you right-click on a Toolbox tool to run in debug mode. An error dialog lists a file that contains details. Attempting to open ENVI LiDAR + IDL also fails to launch IDL. This issue does not occur in Windows 8.1.

Workaround: Run the ENVI LiDAR executable in Windows 7 compatibility mode. Navigate to C:\Program Files\Exelis\IDL83\bin\bin.x86_64. Right-click ENVILiDAR.exe and select Properties. Select the Compatibility tab, and enable the Run this program in compatibility mode for check box. Select Windows 7 from the drop-down list, and click OK.

Problems Fixed

ID Description
LIDAR-68356, 68357, and 68358 Network project open by different machines simultaneously causes issues.
LIDAR-68663 Generated bitmap.tif has WGS84 UTM 15N when project projection is arbitrary.
LIDAR-68668 Cannot specify NZTM projection for output with data in NZTM projection.
LIDAR-68682 GetPointsInPolygon returns !NULL if the number of points returned are above a certain threshold.