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LidarKit

Convert E57 to LAS or LAZ in your browser

Every scan placed by its pose, colour and intensity kept, the coordinate system carried when the file has one. Nothing is uploaded and there is no fixed size limit.

Drop your E57 file here

or choose a file

ASTM E57 · single or multi-scan · any size

No upload. Processing runs in a Web Worker on your device — this app has no server component and no upload endpoint. How it works

What the conversion does

E57 and LAS describe a point cloud differently. An E57 is a project: one or more scans, each with its own coordinate frame and a pose that places it in the common frame, plus the scanner's imagery. A LAS file is a single flat list of points. The conversion has to decide how to flatten one into the other, and every decision it makes is shown before it runs:

  • Scans are merged, registered. Each scan's pose is applied to its points, exactly as the E57 viewer applies it, so a registered project comes out registered. Which scan a point came from is kept in the point source ID, numbered from 1 — the one per-point field every downstream tool preserves.
  • LAS 1.4, point format 7 or 6. Format 7 when any scan has colour, 6 otherwise. Colour is written as 16-bit RGB; intensity is scaled onto 0–65535 from the range the E57 declares.
  • 1 mm precision. Coordinates are stored as integers at a scale of 0.001 with the offset at the first point. A 32-bit coordinate then reaches 2 147 km in every direction, which no scan project approaches.
  • The coordinate system is copied, not guessed. If the E57's coordinateMetadata holds WKT, it becomes a LAS WKT record. If it holds nothing — common for indoor and handheld scanners — no CRS record is written, and the panel says so.
  • Invalid points are dropped. An E57 point flagged invalid has no geometry; written anyway it would appear as a spike at the scanner origin.

What is not carried

Return numbers, timestamps, row and column indices, vendor extension fields, and the images. Every point is written as return 1 of 1 with GPS time 0. LAS has no place for imagery; if the photographs matter, the viewer shows them alongside the scan.

How large files are handled

An E57 has no entropy coding, so it decodes in plain JavaScript: the reader walks the file a page at a time, verifying each page's checksum, and hands points to the writer as it goes. The output — LAZ compressed by the same WebAssembly build of laz-perf that powers the LAS/LAZ converter, or plain LAS — streams to a file on disk rather than accumulating in memory. Neither input nor output has to fit in RAM, which is what lets a multi-gigabyte project convert in one pass.

Because the uncompressed output for a large project can be tens of gigabytes, the panel shows the maximum LAS size before you start. LAZ is the default for that reason.

Checking the result

Drop the output on the inspector to read back the header it was given — the count, the bounds, the WKT record and the point format — or on the viewer to look at it. Both run in the browser too.

Frequently asked questions

How do I convert an E57 file to LAS?
Drop the .e57 file onto the converter above. It reads the file's structure and shows what it holds — scans, points, colour, coordinate system — and what will be written. Choose LAZ or LAS and press Convert; the file is decoded and written on your own machine, and nothing is uploaded.
What happens to a multi-scan E57 project?
Every scan is written into one LAS file, each placed by its own pose so a registered project stays registered. The scan a point came from is kept in the point source ID field, numbered from 1, so it can still be selected or coloured downstream. Scans that carry no pose are written in their own scanner frame, and the converter says so before it runs.
Is the coordinate system preserved?
When the E57 declares one. The file's coordinateMetadata is copied into an OGC WKT record and the LAS 1.4 WKT flag is set. Many E57 files, especially from indoor and handheld scanners, declare none; the converter then writes no CRS record rather than inventing one, and tells you.
Which LAS version and point format is written?
LAS 1.4, point format 7 when any scan carries colour and format 6 when none does. These are the current extended formats: full 16-bit colour, 256 classes, a 64-bit point count and a WKT coordinate system. Coordinates are stored at 1 mm precision with the offset placed at the first point.
Are colour and intensity kept?
Yes. Colour is written as 16-bit RGB, lifted from 8-bit when the scan stored 8-bit values. Intensity is scaled onto the LAS 0–65535 range using the range the E57 declares for it, so a float intensity from 0 to 1 and an integer intensity from 0 to 4095 both come out full-scale.
What is not carried over?
Return numbers, timestamps, row and column indices, vendor extension fields and the embedded images. Every point is written as return 1 of 1 with a GPS time of 0, and points the E57 flags as invalid are dropped rather than written at the scanner origin. LAS has no place for imagery at all.
Should I choose LAS or LAZ?
LAZ, unless a specific tool refuses it. It holds exactly the same points and metadata at a fraction of the size, and every current GIS and point cloud package reads it. The uncompressed LAS output can reach tens of gigabytes for a large scan project, which is why the converter shows the maximum size before you start.
Is there a file size limit?
No. The E57 is read a page at a time and the output is streamed to disk as it is produced, so neither the input nor the output has to fit in memory. A multi-gigabyte, multi-scan project converts in one pass with a progress bar and a cancel button.
Are my files uploaded?
No. There is no server. The E57 is read with the browser's File API, decoded in a Web Worker on your device and written to a file the browser then offers as a download. This is the reason the tool exists: scan projects are routinely under NDA and far too large to upload anyway.

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