Which is better to do: contour smoothing or surface smoothing? I did a little test with a surface with no smoothing, a surface with contour smoothing set to medium, and a surface with surface smoothing. The results puzzled me. The contours in the surface with no smoothing matched the contours of the surface with surface smoothing. The profiile of the surface with no smoothing matched the profile of the surface with contour smoothing. Are these results typical? I was surprised that the contours of the surface with surface smoothing didn't look smoother. I was also surprised that the surface with no smoothing and the surface with contour smoothing generated the same profile. Why is that? Any help is much appreciated. Thanks so much!
Meredith
Solved! Go to Solution.
Solved by BrianHailey. Go to Solution.
What size grid did you use and what was the composition of the surface?
When you smooth contours, you are changing the display of the contours, and not the actual surface itself, that's why the profile didn't change after the smoothing.
When smoothing a surface, you are actually adding data to the surface but, and here's the important part, any data that was added to the surface originally, isn't modified in any way.
Since you said the contours weren't changed after smoothing the surface, I'm going to assume that the surface was built from contours originally.
The surface was created from contours. Now it makes sense. Thanks so much!
Meredith