Installation

Installing from PyPi

pip install pylas

Optional dependencies for LAZ support

pylas does not support LAZ (.laz) file by itself but can use one of several optional dependencies to support compressed LAZ files.

The 2 supported options are:

1. lazrs [lazrs PyPi]
2. laszip-python (bindings to laszip)

When encountering LAZ data, pylas will try to use one of the backend in the order described above. (Example: if lazrs is not installed or if it fails during, the process, pylas will try laszip)

lazrs is a Rust port of the laszip compression and decompression. Its main advantage is that it is able to compress/decompress using multiple threads which can greatly speed up things.

laszip is the official and original LAZ implementation by Martin Isenburg. The advantage of the laszip backend is that its the official implementation, but does not offer multi-threaded compression/decompression.

Both the laszip bindings and lazrs are available on pip.

To install pylas with one of its supported backend use one of the following commands

# To install with lazrs only
pip install pylas[lazrs]

# To install with laszip only
pip install pylas[laszip]

# To install with both
pip install pylas[lazrs,laszip]