Corridor Surface Contours zig-zag (2014)

[craig_robertson]

Is there a simple way that I am missing to make surface contours from my corridor 'nice'? I am just using generic parts LinkWidthSlope and LinkWidthOffset, my alignment has a nice smooth radius and I am targeting feature lines with curves. I have tried changing the frequency and tried adding links as breaklines but I cannot get rid of the squiggle no matter how I tweak things. I've attached images showing the corridor and Alignment(A)/Feature lines (F) the image without the corridor shows the squiggle more.

[tcorey]

Try lowering your frequencies around the curve.

Try smoothing the surface.

[odoshi]

That's just the nature of the TIN. I've seen jagged contours as well, especially around curb returns on a corridor. Every time the contour crosses a TIN line, it is going to add a vertex and most likly a bend if the other side of the triangle is at a different elevation.

Turning down the frequency of the corridor region will create less zig-zags but you may lose the accuracy of the curve.

If you are using targets for your subasemblies, make sure they are correct. Give them a double-check in object viewer.

What you don't want to see is something like a Chinese paper fan around the curved parts of the road. If you contour that, it's going to look like the zig-zag contours you got.

What I usually end up telling clients is that you can get the contours only so far with the corridor surface. Then you can extract them [Surface menu - Extract Objects] or trace over them in areas where they look like crud and shut off the originals.

In the end, we are working with a wireframe surface, so it will always take some hand tweaking of the contours for proposed surfaces.

Regards,

Mike

[annw2]

Then I had my boss asking if I was taking all that time to add in all those zig zags in the contours. He is pencil on paper only.

[Joe-Bouza]

This complaint is common and can be fixed as Tim suggested. However, a poorly designed surface will always look poor. I'm not saying yours is poorly designed, but you get out of the software what you put into the software. It just takes practice.

squiggly contours should not mean a call to arms against the software. Ask your boss what he would do if the alignment and profile change? And what about his annotation?

Personally, I would never deliver a raw (design) corridor surface, or a FL/infill or projected grading for that matter.

Rather, I prefer to paste my design surfaces into a final surface and use the Modify>> Surface >> smooth surface. this gives a wide range of smoothing options that can be applied to the entire surface or regions of the surface. So the definition tab of my FinalGround (FG) has pasted surfaces with smoothing on the bottom. This way regardless of the order, addition of data. removal of data from the design surfaces; FG is always <surface> <smooth>

You can trick your friends and yourself by creating the finished pasted surface up front, turn the corridor (or any other design surfaces off and display FG; nice and smooth from start to finish, But I hold on to the end because the more smoothing you add the more triangles you get the slower civil3d runs. So use it for delivery