ELVIS vs a clipped CAD-ready export for site elevation data

ELVIS is the free national source for Australian elevation data, and for most one-off site jobs it is the first place to look. It gives you LiDAR point clouds and gridded DEMs for anywhere that has been flown, at no charge. What it does not give you is a file cut to your lot: you draw a box, and it emails you the whole tiles that box touches, in the tile size, resolution and format the original capture was published in. Turning that into a site surface is a separate job you do yourself.

This page sets out what ELVIS delivers, what that leaves you to do, and when paying for a clipped export instead is the cheaper way round.

What is ELVIS and what does it cost?

ELVIS (Elevation and Depth, at elevation.fsdf.org.au) is run by Geoscience Australia under the Foundation Spatial Data Framework. It publishes elevation captured by the states, territories and federal programs in one place, including bathymetry. It is free, and there is no account or licence fee.

The workflow is:

1. Zoom to your area of interest.
2. Long press on the map and drag to draw a bounding box, then release.
3. Pick the datasets you want from the list that appears for that box. They are grouped as raw LiDAR point cloud (LAS or LAZ), gridded elevation (DEM), and underwater depth.
4. Enter an email address and submit the request.
5. ELVIS builds the package and emails you a download link, usually within several minutes. Large areas take longer.

There is a 15 GB limit per request, and the link expires, so download it when it arrives.

What arrives, and what you still have to do

The download is a ZIP of whole tiles, not the shape you drew. Gridded elevation is supplied in whole tiles whose size is set by the dataset you pick - a kilometre or two across is typical, and some programs publish larger - so a suburban lot of 600 square metres still arrives as at least one full tile, and a lot that straddles a tile boundary arrives as two or four. Point cloud tiles for the same area are much larger again: a 10 km by 10 km area can run to several gigabytes.

That leaves five steps between the download and a usable site surface:

• Merge and clip. Mosaic the tiles, then cut them to your lot or study area. Until you do, every operation runs over square kilometres of ground you do not care about.
• Check which product you have. A DEM is bare earth, with buildings and vegetation removed, which is what you want for design. A DSM keeps roofs and treetops. Contouring a DSM by accident is a common and expensive mistake.
• Reproject. Tiles come in the projection the capture was published in. Your drawing is in a specific MGA zone, and a mismatch between GDA94 and GDA2020 is roughly 1.8 metres on the ground in Australia, which is enough to move a boundary off a fence line. See why the coordinate system matters.
• Watch the resolution mix. Capture resolution varies by location and by program, and an adjacent tile can be a different grid to the one next to it. Some tools will not merge mixed resolutions at all.
• Generate what CAD needs. ELVIS gives you a grid or a point cloud. Contours, a TIN surface and 3D linework for Civil 3D all have to be generated from it. See contours or DEM.

None of this is hard if you have QGIS or Civil 3D open and have done it before. It is usually 30 to 90 minutes the first time, and it is work that has to be repeated per site.

ELVIS compared with a clipped export

	ELVIS	LayeredGeo export
Cost	Free	$15 per site
Area you get	Whole tiles touching your box, at the dataset's tile size	Clipped to the lot or the area you draw
Delivery	Email link, several minutes, 15 GB cap	ZIP downloaded in the browser, minutes
Projection	As published by the capture program	GDA2020, GDA94 or WGS84, your choice
Elevation outputs	LAS or LAZ point cloud, GeoTIFF, ASCII grid, ESRI Grid	Contours, elevation points, GeoTIFF DEM, DXF TIN
Point cloud	Yes, where flown	No
Coverage	National, including bathymetry	QLD, NSW, VIC, SA, ACT, TAS
Other site layers	Elevation and depth only	Cadastre, geology, soils, planning and hazard overlays, easements, imagery in the same ZIP
Processing	Merge, clip, reproject, contour yourself	Done before delivery

The honest comparison is time against fifteen dollars. If you want the raw point cloud, if you are working outside the six states above, or if you are covering a corridor rather than a lot, ELVIS is the right tool and there is no substitute for it. If what you need is a lot-sized surface in a known projection with the cadastre sitting on top of it, and you would rather not spend the hour, the export is the shorter path.

Which one for which job

Use ELVIS when: you need the raw LAS or LAZ point cloud; you are mapping a region, corridor or catchment where whole tiles are what you want anyway; the site is in WA, NT or offshore; you need bathymetry; you are set up to process elevation and the processing is routine for you.

Use a clipped export when: you want one lot set up quickly in a chosen CRS; you want contours, a GeoTIFF DEM and a DXF TIN generated rather than derived by hand; you also need cadastre, geology, soils and planning overlays for the same site in the same package; the job is billed and an hour of your time costs more than the export.

What neither one is

Both are government elevation mapping, and both are desktop products. Public LiDAR is right for feasibility, concept grading, drainage understanding and site set-up. It is not surveyed ground level. Vintage varies block to block, ground under dense vegetation carries artefacts, and neither source knows about earthworks done since the flight. Detailed design, setout and anything boundary-dependent needs current survey, and ground conditions below the surface need a geotechnical investigation.

You can export site data for an address in QLD, NSW, VIC, SA, ACT or TAS, or see a sample export to check the file structure before you pay.

LayeredGeo lets you download site data for Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, the ACT and Tasmania - contours, elevation, cadastre, geology, soils and planning overlays - in DXF, Shapefile, GeoPackage, KMZ and raster formats, ready for Civil 3D, QGIS and ArcGIS.

About this article. Published by LayeredGeo and written from the published research cited in the Sources section above. It is general information about how property and ground conditions are assessed in Australia, not engineering, planning, legal or financial advice, and it is not specific to any property. Check anything that matters against the source dataset or a suitably qualified professional before you rely on it. If you spot something wrong, tell us at hello@layeredgeo.com.au and we will fix it.

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