Not sure how to answer this because it's very easy to mess up your data and not realize. But here goes, please be careful and check distances and elevations after you use this.
1) In the NOAA Tool, you'll need to zoom into the area you want to find, then click on the pencil and draw a box around the area you want lidar for. This will automatically create a file for you (see how it selected 1,305,832 points to the right?). Then click the shopping cart to add it to your data access request. Then click the OTHER shoppting cart above to submit your request.
Click Next and take a deep breathe.
Now you have to tell it what parameters you want the lidar to be in. You have two choices: leave it in the original data frame or convert it to the easier to use international standard. There might be some numerical instability/reprojection error going with the international standard, but if you just want to get up and running I suggest skipping to the second image.
For the "default" method, it tells you what coordinate frame the data was projected in relative to the earth's shape. Here you'll need to make sure you follow these steps. After you get the data, you'll need to go into this thread and make an EPSG request:
tgctours.proboards.com/thread/18202/help-asking-me-epsg-code1: Output product MUST be Point
2: Output Format can be either LAS (runs faster) or LAZ (smaller download)
3) Data Classes MUST be All
4) Double check that Horizontal Units and Vertical Units are Feet/Feet or Meter/Meter. DO NOT CHANGE THEM.
SKIP HERE IF YOU WANT TO PROCESS DATA NOW:
This one gets you a standard EPSG code that you can use to process your data as soon as it's ready.
1) Change Projetion to UTM. The Zone field WILL AUTOMATICALLY UPDATE TO THE RIGHT VALUE.
2) Make sure Horizontal Units and Vertical Units are both METERS. THEY MUST BE METERS!!!
3) Set output Product to Point.
3B) Set output Format to LAS for faster processing or LAZ for a smaller download.
4) Choose ALL Data Classes.
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Now when you go to process this lidar data, you'll need to enter an EPSG and leave Force Units blank.
For UTM, it's easy, it's just 269NN where NN is the two digit zone number. So 19 here is 26919 11 would be 26911
Hope this helps.
