An overview of the 3D Analyst toolbox

The 3D Analyst toolbox provides a collection of geoprocessing tools that enable a wide variety of analytical, data management, and data conversion operations on surface models and three-dimensional vector data. The toolbox is conveniently organized into toolsets which define the scope of tasks accomplished by the tools therein.

3D Analyst tools provide the ability to create and analyze surface data represented in raster, terrain, triangulated irregular network (TIN), and LAS dataset formats. 3D data can be converted from a rich variety of formats, including COLLADA, lidar, SketchUp, OpenFlight, and many other data types. Analysis of geometric relationships and feature properties, interpolation of raster and various triangulated irregular network (TIN) models, and analysis of surface properties are only some of the numerous functions provided by the 3D Analyst tools.

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Toolset	Description
3D Features	Provides tools for evaluating geometric properties and relationships between three-dimensional features.
Conversion	Contains tools that convert feature classes, files, LAS datasets, rasters, TINs, and terrains to other data formats. The tools are organized into toolsets based on the data type being converted.
Data Management	Provides tools for creating and managing terrain, TIN, and LAS datasets.
Functional Surface	Provides analysis tools that evaluate elevation information from raster, terrain, and TIN surfaces.
Raster Interpolation	Provides numerous interpolation tools that can produce continuous raster surfaces from a given set of sample points, including hydrologically correct surface models.
Raster Math	Features tools that perform mathematical operations on raster datasets.
Raster Reclass	Contains tools that enable reclassification of raster data.
Raster Surface	Provides analysis tools that enable the determination of raster surface properties, such as contours, slope, aspect, hillshade, and difference calculation.
Triangulated Surface	Provides analysis tools that enable the determination of surface properties of TIN, terrain, and LAS datasets, such as contours, slope, aspect, hillshade, difference calculation, volumetric computations, and outlier detection.
Visibility	Features tools that enable visibility analysis to be performed using various types of observer features and obstruction sources that include surfaces, multipatches, which are great for representing structures like buildings, and 3D features.

Overview of toolsets in the 3D Analyst toolbox