Has anyone been able to import a survey into CAD? I have PIX4D products like MATIC and Survey and I'm told by the engineer he needs a file to import into CAD. Anyone able to do this and through what software did you use?

In general, it is the customer who says what he needs based on the software he uses.  

The answer to your question could be vast.  I would try with a mesh in DXF format, it's the most common, but there are thousands of other ways to do it.  

No idea if Pix4D handles DXFs.  Metashape does it, Globalmapper does too.

What photogrammetry product do you need to get into CAD? "Import a survey" and "needs a file to import to CAD" are ambiguous.

How long is a piece of string?

Hello, there. May we know what kind of file? We will confirm with our teams.

If what you're looking to work with in the CAD is the topography, or shape of the ground, I agree with LV_Forestry that exporting the mesh or contour lines as DXF is probably what you're after.

I work with MetaShape (Agisoft Photoscan), and exporting both are possible.

DJI Wanda Posted at 12-3 01:12
Hello, there. May we know what kind of file? We will confirm with our teams.

Just any of the outputs the P1 can export to.

Thank you so much for your confirmation, we have forwarded it to our engineer, and we will get back to you once we have the answer.

If DJI takes the basic request, P1 can output JPG MP4 MOV....

DJI Natalia Posted at 12-6 23:30
Thank you so much for your confirmation, we have forwarded it to our engineer, and we will get back to you once we have the answer.

It's been a while since we've seen you here.  having a break?

Hi, we got the response from our engineers.
The files that P1 can directly obtain are only photos in jpg format and raw format. As for whether it can be directly imported into CAD, it depends on whether supports importing photos. It is recommended to consult CAD. If you need to generate other data from the photos collected by P1 and import it into CAD, it also depends on what format of data and software you need.

CAD users want geo-referenced imagery, usually in manageable file formats and sizes (CAD does not handle huge TIF files as well as GIS does, so I try to keep orthos <200mb or I tile them).

If your CAD user knows how to insert the imagery themselves accurately, you could either try giving them TIF tiles directly out of the photogrammetry software OR generate them yourself with something like Global Mapper (after doing qa/qc, cropping to valid data extents and exporting to a more CAD-friendly file format like .ECW (recommended)





I use Carlson Autocad and the command to import geo-referenced imagery is "GEOTIFF" (even with .SID, .ECW or .JP2 file formats).    I believe Civil3D users use the "MAPINSERT" command, but I haven't used that in years and don't remember.   
I prefer to import the imagery into CAD myself because I don't trust others to know how to do this and many will just drop it in and then eyeball a shift themselves.   After importing the imagery, I use "eTRANSMIT" to packing it up into a zip file and that's what I send to CAD users, with instructions on how to use it as an External Reference (XREF).  







There may be free CAD software out there that let's you do all of this, but I'm not familiar with the free CAD programs at all.    If you don't have any other use for CAD, maybe you just need to do a little education on how to import imagery so you can teach your users (and not have to take on the cost of CAD software you don't otherwise need).  

As far as Global Mapper goes, I really think anyone doing drone mapping should have a license of Global Mapper, unless you're already a qGIS or ArcPro user.   There's just so many other things you need to do to prepare deliverables and Global Mapper handles -a lot- of them.  

P.S. - For TIN surfaces/elevations,  I use LandXML exports, not DXF mesh faces.   That process is more involved and a longer writeup though.