Working with Large Data & Backgrounds
Updated December 19, 2025
This article applies to:
- Terrain 3D
- Terrain Forestry
When working with large files, you may find experience slow performance. We typically suggest keeping the number of points in a Terrain file below 10 million. If you import one or more tiles that exceed this number, we recommend thinning the data.
In this support article, we'll provide tips and techniques for handling large datasets.
Thinning Data on Import
If you're working with LiDAR/DEM data, you can thin it during import. To do this, select Import File and browse to find and select the LAS/LAZ/DEM file. In the Import Options dialog, go to the Selection tab, as shown in Figure 1 below:
Figure 1: Import Options dialog - Selection tab.
- By Region:
Press Add... to create a new region (you can draw it manually or import it from a Shapefile or KMZ file). Then, use it to reduce the number of points.
Click Select... to choose a rectangle, corridor, polygon or exterior region limit.
Figure 2: Filtering Region dialog.
Select the Region and modify its point resolution.
In the example below, the following settings will import all the points inside the polygon and will skip those outside of it.
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Figure 3: Filtering settings to skip points outside a polygon.
- By Point Resolution
Although it's recommended to better control the thinning method, It's not mandatory to have a thinning polygon. You can simply adjust the slider bar to the left or right to control the Point Resolution quality.
Thinning data after Import
To simplify the data after import, you can import all the raw data. Then, from the Terrain Modeling ribbon, select Simplify and choose one of the four methods shown below:
Figure 4: Simplify Point Data dialog - Filtering Methods.
Background Files
To effectively handle large background files, you can consider various approaches based on your project's needs:
For Images from Live Maps:
- Reduce the area to focus only on the region of interest.
In the example below, the topo frame (green square) covers not only the project area but also a large area around it.
Figure 5: Live Maps - Large image size.
To fix this, you could crop only the area of interest for the project, rather than the entire topo frame, which would result in a 324 MB file size.
After croping only the area of the project, the size of the file is reduced to only 55MB.
Figure 6: Live Maps - Smaller image size.
- Lower the image quality to decrease the file size.
After downloading the imagery tiles, you can control the image quality by moving the slider as shown below in Figure 7.
Figure 7: Imagery Import Options dialog
For External files such as TIF, JPG, or others:
- Reduce the image quality.
The image quality can be controlled as shown in Figure 7 above.
- Split the imagery into tiles covering only the AOI.
This process is further detailed in the YouTube video below: