Volume Surface Boundaries

[beccasme]

Hello,

I am working in Civil 3D 2012.  I created a grid volume surface based on two other surfaces I have in my drawing.  One of the surfaces is extremely large and re-building the volume surface takes an extremely long time, i'm assuming because it's calculating every point of the large surface, even though my comparison surface only covers a fraction of it.  I want to add a boundary to the surface so it doesn't have to go through the entire large surface, however when I add an outer boundary to the volume surface, all of the information disappears, as if it excludes the information.  When use the same boundary but make it a "show" boundary it works, however it's still going through and calculating all the points on the large surface.

I don't want to do a bounded volume under the analysis tab because I need an acutal surface to work with and apply styles to for further design.  Applying a boundy to my comparison surface didn't do it, and I can't add the boundary to the large surface because I need it to compare other surfaces i will create in different areas (also it's only a data reference in this drawing.)

Does anyone know why the "outer" boundary isn't working?  (i'm using a simple polyline for the boundary)  Does it need a special sort of object for volume boundaries?

Any help?! thanks!!

[sjg]

The outer boundary is supposed to clip everything on the outside. Just because you don't see the data doesn't mean its not there. If you remove the boundary the surface will return. You could create a separate surface and paste your volume surface in and create a boundary for the area in question. The new surface will remain dynamic with its original. Use the new surface for volumes. Give that a try.