How can I work with ASCII GIS Data in Rhino/Grasshopper?

I downloaded a digital topography model as ASCII GIS Data from the official governmental website of Nordrhein-Westfalen (Germany):

About the digital model

Download Server for GIS data

I downloaded the dgm1_05566076_Rheine_EPSG4647_XYZ.zip, but after hours of Google research I am not intelligent enough to import those files into Rhino to create a digital model of the topography.

Any help...?!

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Armin Seltz on October 26, 2017 at 5:10am

You should get this nice little Grasshopper extension by blickfeld7 for exactly this purpose. All it takes is 2 nodes in Grasshopper.

http://blickfeld7.com/architecture/rhino/grasshopper/DTM/Tutorial/

If you want to import the whole data, you need to combine all the .xyz files first. Since there is some 6.32 Gb of data in the set you mention, it will probably take a long time and possibly crash, especially if you have little RAM. I tried it with one of the 124MB files and it worked fine, but takes around 25 seconds, so doing a quick calculation should take around 25 minutes for all of them. DTM does have a little window that shows you its progress though, which is nice.

Permalink Reply by Benedikt Glampe on October 26, 2017 at 6:51am

Wow - that works pretty well! Is there any possibility to combine the files and arrange them properly?

Permalink Reply by Armin Seltz on October 26, 2017 at 7:06am

Hm, well the .xyz files are basically just text files, so I am sure you could just combine them into 1 file. Just looking into into a way to combine them into one file. Of course Grasshopper can be used for that as well.

Or just use a simple text editor and manually paste together the content of the files you need. Sublime Text for example works well and is free.