SiteScout is a browser tool for exploring the LiDAR that covers Athens, Georgia. Pick a spot on a map, open the point cloud right there, and read real site information out of it — building heights, roof and foundation elevations, existing grade — all in the coordinate system a Georgia site engineer actually works in. Nothing to install, nothing to convert.
The rest of this page is detail for anyone who wants it. The tool speaks for itself — the link above is the main thing.
Why it exists
Contour services are great for surfaces, but a classified point cloud carries far more: where a building actually sits, how tall its roof is, what the grade is around its foundation. SiteScout reads that out directly, and does the coordinate work for you.
USGS delivers these tiles in NAD83(2011) Conus Albers, in meters, with NAVD88 heights. SiteScout reprojects everything to Georgia West state plane, US survey feet (EPSG:2240) on the fly, accurate to under 0.01 ft across a tile. Every readout is already in the working system, and traced geometry exports in it too. You just read feet.
What you can do
- Pick any point to read its easting, northing, elevation, the interpolated ground beneath it, and its height above ground.
- Measure between two points for horizontal distance, elevation change, slope distance, and grade.
- Trace a building outline by clicking its roof corners. On close, SiteScout reads the classified building returns inside the outline and reports peak roof, 95th-percentile roof, and existing ground along the perimeter — min, max, and average. The difference is the building height.
Ground elevations come from a 2 m grid built from every ground-classified return, with gaps under buildings filled from the surrounding grade — exactly the existing grade you want under a foundation.
Export to Civil 3D
Traced footprints export to a DXF in Georgia West feet that drops straight into a drawing at 0,0 with no transform. Each footprint becomes a closed 3D polyline at true ground elevation on a FOOTPRINT layer, a matching outline at peak-roof elevation on a ROOF layer, and a text label with the roof and grade numbers on an ANNO layer.
Finding your way around
The map is restricted to the Athens area and styled to match. Search an address to fly to the tile that contains it. Inside a tile, building outlines, street names at their intersections, and house numbers on zoom are drawn draped over the terrain, and a vicinity map in the corner keeps you oriented.
Built by Ilia Chernitsky.