Bounded Surface Area

[mabbas]

I am trying to get C3D to report the surface area for a bounded area with no success.  I am aware of the Bounded Volume feature, which BTW appears to be retired in the 2014 release (AECCCFDBADDBOUNDEDVOLUME fails to produce any results). Obviously there have been some major changes.

What I want to do is retrieve a report for a defined section of a surface, regardless, of what type of surface it is.  I see this as simple as deriving the 3D areas of the trinangles within a bounds of a TIN.  What am I missing?

[BrianHailey]

Surface area of a surface? I assume you want the 3D area?

Nothing that I know of will give you that information other than creating a new surface for that area or temporarily editing your surface, get the info, and then undo the edit.

A couple options to think about, you could create a cropped surface of the area you are interested in. You could create a new surface and paste in your original surface and then apply a boundary to it.

I'm sure there are other ways but this is what comes to mind for me.

[BrianHailey]

As for the bounded volumes command, it's REPORTSURFBOUNDEDVOLUME.

[mabbas]

Yes, I previously tried the REPORTSURFBOUNDEDVOLUME command.  There were no results, absolutely nothing, no error message, just nothing on the command line.  It is the same for both commands.  The bounded volume is what I used to use (many previous versions to 2014).  Maybe I need to think of a different approach....

Here is what I need to accomplish.  I have a large excavation project that regular quantity surveys are taken on.  From the survey data a surface model is prepared in C3D.  We have different areas that have different pay items.  For example there are 1H:4V slopes that shotcrete is placed on that we are paid for at a 4" thickness.  So the 3D area is a critical component of that calculation.

Maybe hacking the original surface into pieces would be the best approach. It just seems that being able to query this from the master drawing would be easier, more elegant, and quite handy.

Thanks

[NMRollo]

A dirty but simple approach you could try with TIN surfaces is:

1. Create your bounded surface. e.g. Apply "the perimeter of gravel" line to your "finished sub-grade" surface as an outer boundary.
2. Expand the "Surfaces" grouping found under the "Toolspace" "Propspector" Tab.
3. Left-click the relevant surface.
4. Click "Surface Properties" (see attachment for a screen shot)
5. Expand the "Extended" Tab and VOILA...

A similar methodology applied to a TIN Volume surface does not yield surface area information but does give you your volume information.

If you are interested, I can offer a method that can give you a report in table form in your drawing of your volume and related 2D area.

As a footnote: The users of this forum work with the many different versions of the software. It is a good idea to add the details of the software version and the hardware setup that you are using to your profile signature. That way, nobody will ever have to ask you what version you are working with.