Pdal_merge

Objective

Generate a Cloud Optimized Point Cloud (COPC) from a several LAS/LAZ files and assign metadata to them.

Pipeline

Reusable merge.json

[
  {
    "type": "readers.las",
    "filename": "*.laz"
  },
  {
    "type": "filters.merge"
  },
  {
    "type": "writers.copc",
    "filename": "merged.copc.laz",
    "forward": "all",
    "vlrs": [
      {
        "user_id": "DATASET_META",
        "record_id": 1,
        "description": "Dataset metadata",
        "filename": "dataset-metadata.json"
      }
    ]
  }
]

Data specific example for the dataset-metadata.json file:

{
  "license": "Creative Commons Attribution 4.0",
  "owner": "Example Organisation",
  "creation_date": "2026-07-21",
  "theme": "Elevation / LiDAR"
}

This metdata field is not standardised so tools won’t know to use it.

Execution

• pdal pdal pipeline .\merge.json
• micromamba-win-64.exe run -p pdal pdal pipeline .\merge.json

Notes

There are some headers that are common on LAS that could be set, which would be set in the last object in the pipeline such as:

• creation_year and creation_doy (Day of the year, starting at 1 for January 1)
• system_id and software_id