# Lidar LAS files of version 1.4 crash ParaView 5.7.0

**URL:** https://discourse.paraview.org/t/lidar-las-files-of-version-1-4-crash-paraview-5-7-0/3048
**Category:** LidarView, Lidar, and SLAM
**Created:** [November 25, 2019, 10:59pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/lidar-las-files-of-version-1-4-crash-paraview-5-7-0/3048 "2019-11-25T22:59:57Z")
**Posts on this page:** 10
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![wsherman](https://discourse.paraview.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/8797f3/32.png) [@wsherman](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/wsherman)
#### Post date: [November 25, 2019, 10:59pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/lidar-las-files-of-version-1-4-crash-paraview-5-7-0/3048/1 "2019-11-25T22:59:57Z")

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I have some LAS Lidar point cloud files that are of version 1.4 of the LAS format that cause ParaView to crash. For the moment I have the ability to down-covert these files to version 1.3 (or 1.2) of the file format, and ParaView handles these. So I’m just reporting this as a bug because ParaView should do something other than crashing when encountering these files. Ideally it should handle the newer format, but at the very least just report that the format isn’t handled and use an earlier LAS format in the console window.

This is tested on Linux, MS-Windows and MacOS.

Here’s the relevant part of the crash output when running on Linux:  
% paraview  
[load 1.4 LAS file]  
terminate called after throwing an instance of ‘std::out\_of\_range’  
what(): version minor out of range

```
Loguru caught a signal: SIGABRT
Stack trace:
62 0x40772d paraview() [0x40772d]

```

* * *

the “version minor out of range” message probably comes from the LAStools, or whatever LAS library is being used.

```
 Bill
```

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### Author: ![mwestphal](https://discourse.paraview.org/user_avatar/discourse.paraview.org/mwestphal/32/17_2.png) [@mwestphal](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/mwestphal)
#### Post date: [November 26, 2019, 8:47am UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/lidar-las-files-of-version-1-4-crash-paraview-5-7-0/3048/2 "2019-11-26T08:47:59Z")

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Could you share a 1.4 and a 1.3 file please ?

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### Author: ![wsherman](https://discourse.paraview.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/8797f3/32.png) [@wsherman](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/wsherman)
#### Post date: [November 26, 2019, 2:52pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/lidar-las-files-of-version-1-4-crash-paraview-5-7-0/3048/3 "2019-11-26T14:52:42Z")

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Yes, here are two versions of a smallish Lidar PointCloud.  
Bill  
[pt000025\_v13.las](https://discourse.paraview.org/uploads/short-url/hBohuUIHxQ62TcjpAkTegRgDiE3.las) (699.8 KB) [pt000025\_v14.las](https://discourse.paraview.org/uploads/short-url/1L8e8YNvYQ2ZMFOotcpFRseDhAx.las) (741.1 KB)

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### Author: ![ben.boeckel](https://discourse.paraview.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/ea5d25/32.png) [@ben.boeckel](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/ben.boeckel)
#### Post date: [March 21, 2020, 2:42am UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/lidar-las-files-of-version-1-4-crash-paraview-5-7-0/3048/4 "2020-03-21T02:42:26Z")

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@utkarsh.ayachit @danlipsa We should check if these files still crash 5.8.0.

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### Author: ![utkarsh.ayachit](https://discourse.paraview.org/user_avatar/discourse.paraview.org/utkarsh.ayachit/32/39_2.png) [@utkarsh.ayachit](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/utkarsh.ayachit)
#### Post date: [March 21, 2020, 1:30pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/lidar-las-files-of-version-1-4-crash-paraview-5-7-0/3048/5 "2020-03-21T13:30:59Z")

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`pt000025_v13.las ` loads with 5.8, but `pt000025_v14.las` crashes as follows:

```auto
.....
10 0x7f2be42a3a5a vtkLASReader::RequestData(vtkInformation*, vtkInformationVector**, vtkInformationVector*) + 586
9 0x7f2bd32b5062 liblas::ReaderFactory::CreateWithStream(std::istream&) + 98
8 0x7f2bd3308d31 liblas::detail::reader::Header::ReadHeader() + 545
7 0x7f2bd32c0f7d liblas::Header::SetVersionMinor(unsigned char) + 109
6 0x7f2bf7dc2d54 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6(+0x92d54) [0x7f2bf7dc2d54]
....
2 0x7f2c021ba801 abort + 321                                                  
1 0x7f2c021b8e97 gsignal + 199                                                                                                          
0 0x7f2c021b8f20 /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6(+0x3ef20) [0x7f2c021b8f20]                                 
( 14.861s) [paraview] :0 FATL| Signal: SIGABRT                     

```

Issue reported [here](https://gitlab.kitware.com/paraview/paraview/issues/19785)

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### Author: ![danlipsa](https://discourse.paraview.org/user_avatar/discourse.paraview.org/danlipsa/32/1563_2.png) [@danlipsa](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/danlipsa)
#### Post date: [March 23, 2020, 5:44pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/lidar-las-files-of-version-1-4-crash-paraview-5-7-0/3048/6 "2020-03-23T17:44:58Z")

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William,  
Another possibility to read your las files is to compile ParaView with PDAL support. I believe liblas (which is used in our reader) is not maintained anymore. Unfortunately PDAL support is not yet built into the ParaView binary.

Dan

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### Author: ![ben.boeckel](https://discourse.paraview.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/ea5d25/32.png) [@ben.boeckel](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/ben.boeckel)
#### Post date: [March 23, 2020, 7:18pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/lidar-las-files-of-version-1-4-crash-paraview-5-7-0/3048/7 "2020-03-23T19:18:17Z")

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> [@danlipsa](#):
>
> I believe liblas (which is used in our reader) is not maintained anymore.

It doesn’t seem dead quite yet (last commit was merging a PR of mine in November). But yes, development activity is very low.

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### Author: ![danlipsa](https://discourse.paraview.org/user_avatar/discourse.paraview.org/danlipsa/32/1563_2.png) [@danlipsa](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/danlipsa)
#### Post date: [March 24, 2020, 3:10am UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/lidar-las-files-of-version-1-4-crash-paraview-5-7-0/3048/8 "2020-03-24T03:10:42Z")

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Interesting background on libLAS, LAStools and PDAL here, the first two answers.

[https://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/306418/difference-between-lastools-liblas-and-pdal](https://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/306418/difference-between-lastools-liblas-and-pdal)

Summary:

libLAS was modeled after LAStools which was closed source at the time when libLAS was created. Then, the maintainer moved on and created PDAL.

libLAS does not support version 1.4

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### Author: ![wsherman](https://discourse.paraview.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/8797f3/32.png) [@wsherman](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/wsherman)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2020, 1:57pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/lidar-las-files-of-version-1-4-crash-paraview-5-7-0/3048/9 "2020-04-13T13:57:24Z")

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Hey everyone,

Thanks for checking back on this issue. And yes, the base issue is that ParaView is built with liblas, which doesn’t handle LAS v1.4, and does not-handle-it very ungracefully.  
I would still hope however that ParaView wouldn’t crash when attempting to load LAS v1.4 files. I would still consider that a bug for ParaView.  
I haven’t looked much at PDAL, so I don’t know whether ParaView could just use it as a drop-in replacement.

BTW, the two solutions I’ve tried are:

1. Use LAStools to convert .las files from version 1.4 to version 1.3

2. Use LAStools to convert .las files into ASCII format and then pipe the output through a script that makes legacy VTK files from it.

(I’ve since been playing with the eVTK Python library, so that might be another solution, but would also include converting files to ASCII first.)

```
Bill
```

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<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![ben.boeckel](https://discourse.paraview.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/ea5d25/32.png) [@ben.boeckel](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/ben.boeckel)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2020, 2:36pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/lidar-las-files-of-version-1-4-crash-paraview-5-7-0/3048/10 "2020-04-13T14:36:56Z")

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VTK/ParaView have PDAL support, but we don’t add it to our binary packages. @utkarsh.ayachit
