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Topo Contour Intervals based on Slope

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Message 1 of 10
rachelc11
940 Views, 9 Replies

Topo Contour Intervals based on Slope

I'm working on a permit where I need to diplay topographic contours, but have different maj/min intervals depending on the slope of the topography. To me, this seems a little strange and makes for misleading information, but it's what the permit requires. Is there an non-head-bashing way to do this? I'm covering a roughly 5000 x 5000 sq ft area with a partially built landfill on it and a rather changing surrounding topography. Not even sure where to start...

9 REPLIES 9
Message 2 of 10
BrianHailey
in reply to: rachelc11

Message 3 of 10
Joe-Bouza
in reply to: rachelc11

Contour interval or contour label interval?

Thank you

Joseph D. Bouza, P.E. (one of 'THOSE' People)

HP Z210 Workstation
Intel Xeon CPU E31240 @ 3.30 Hz
12 GB Ram


Note: Its all Resistentialism, so keep calm and carry on

64 Bit Win10 OS
Message 4 of 10
BrianHailey
in reply to: Joe-Bouza

Contour interval. You see this type of thing on topomaps all the time. Only major contours are displayed in extremely steep areas.

Brian J. Hailey, P.E.



GEI Consultants
My Civil 3D Blog

Message 5 of 10
Joe-Bouza
in reply to: rachelc11

Ok, but I would think only labeling the majors in those areas would keep the clutter down. To paraphrase Laurie C from some years back..Sometimes you have to let go of old ways of doing things.... Smiley Wink

 

What is worse an area of closely spaced contours or and area where minor contours end abruptly ( that's me thinking out loud)

 

I totally understand the topography of different regions would have ridiculous minor contours and like your work around. Here on L.I. I hardly ever see a topo with more than 20 feet of change. I'm sure in the Rockies the contours can get hairy.

Thank you

Joseph D. Bouza, P.E. (one of 'THOSE' People)

HP Z210 Workstation
Intel Xeon CPU E31240 @ 3.30 Hz
12 GB Ram


Note: Its all Resistentialism, so keep calm and carry on

64 Bit Win10 OS
Message 6 of 10
rachelc11
in reply to: Joe-Bouza

Thanks for the solutions. And yes, to clarify the contour intervals themselves are what are changing, i.e. there is a range where flat areas are to be shown at 1 and 5s, steeper at 2 and 5s, etc. I agree that the end result looks awkward, but I'm guessing the reviewers must not like too dense of contours because they're also requiring 1"=100' scaling.

 

Also, perhaps slope banding display styles could be used to figure out where to draw the boundary around where the slop changes? I am not sure if you can only do quantiles or also define a color to be in a specific range i.e. 0-3% instead of lowest quarter of slopes, but I will look to see if this is possible.

Message 7 of 10
jmayo-EE
in reply to: BrianHailey

You may want to update that very helpful post for 2013. Should be a bit easier. 

John Mayo

EESignature

Message 8 of 10
BrianHailey
in reply to: jmayo-EE

Are you referring to the ability to add one surface as a hide boundary to another surface? I'll need to do some testing to see if it will work if that surface has several different areas that are being displayed.

Brian J. Hailey, P.E.



GEI Consultants
My Civil 3D Blog

Message 9 of 10
rachelc11
in reply to: rachelc11

One more trick I found nice. Go to surface properties --> Analysis. Then specify slopes , create 3 ranges, hit the down arrow and type in your ranges, (for me it was 0-6%, 6-12% and 12%-vertical.). Hit apply and voila. You can even make a nice little table legend. I'm tracing roughly the boundary between colors to get my surface masks. (See image attached)

Message 10 of 10
jmayo-EE
in reply to: BrianHailey

That's it Brian.

John Mayo

EESignature

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