How to get simple (not complicated) contours at once ?

[sacprasanna]

Hi all,

Pls help me,any idea wellcome

When I generating contour(surface) using Civil 3D it gives very complicated contours.Some times those contours cuts each orther and have very strange shape.

I used to use SURFER software to generate contours.It gives simple contours.But I like to use Civil 3D because...........

To get some idea I attached SURFER contours and Civil 3D contours.Pls chek those and give me some idea.

I also attached AutoCAD file those who using older versing of Civil 3D.

I know how to smooth contours in Civil 3D but it does not slove my problme.You may say "You shold  use commands like swap edge,delete line .But it is time comsuming and I want simple contours at once like SURFER.

[Alfred.NESWADBA]

Hi,

>> You may say "You shold [...] .But it is time comsuming

You gave the answer yourself: use SURFER and don't ask us what you can do, because you don't want to do anything.

Additionally it seems to be irrelevant to you what is the better interpretation of the points (and you don't use breaklines also). So it also is not necessary to search for "better" results as SURFER creates "other" results, but which one is better I don't know. It's up to you to verify that or to ignore that.

- alfred -

[sacprasanna]

Hallo alfred,

Thanks for your reply.But you don't understand me correctly.

I mean when generation contours I don't want high accuracy(depending on my projects).Acuatlly most important thing is presentating it clearly to someone.

But I can't use SURFER because it does not support boundry,breakline, volume calcMulation,styles etc.Editing surface is very complecated thing and it is really time consumming considering requred accuracy of my projects.

My problme is "Is there any method in Civil 3D to get simple contours(pls see my attached file)?.

Probably changing some defalts in surface.

Pls give some idea?

[Alfred.NESWADBA · Accepted solution]

Hi,

>> Is there any method in Civil 3D to get simple contours

I have a little problem with the wording "simple contours" 😉

If you want to have them showing less vertizes then you have to reduce the number of triangles in your Civil3D-surface (could be done with command SIMPLIFYSURFACE (>>>details<<<), but that reduces the accuracy).

- alfred -

[Joe-Bouza · Accepted solution]

"All Contours are lies"

...and the computer does not know all you want is a less accurate interpolation. You need to control the way the model is built to get the contours you desire.

Many people like the idea of drawing contours to design, which is fine for certain applications, but Civil3d "designs to contour. C3D is a model based application, and contour data is probably the worst data you can use to build a model.

Once you wrap your mind around that getting smooth contours from civil3d becomes less of a problem.

[sacprasanna]

Hi all,

As sugessted alfers "Simplifly surface " command gives some what good(i mean visully) contours.It is good for me.

Thanks for your answer alfers and Joseph and all