is there a command to automatically draw a polyline around the outer limits of points. usually i manually draw a polyline around the points and then add that polyline to the surface as a outer boundary, but i have a huge survey.
If you have created a surface from your points you can use the SurfaceExtractObjects command to create a 3D poly from the boundary.
Does aecshrinkwrap work with COGO points? I don't remember. If not, maybe explode the points down to generic Autocad objects and try the aecshrinkwrap command on those.
I think the command is LINEWORKSHRINKWRAP (at least that's the only "shrinkwrap" type command I could find) and it doesn't seem to work on points.
As far as Civil 3D creating a polyline at the extents of the points, what's the extent?
In the following example, which polyline should Civil 3D use as the extents of the points?
Or something else all together?
Currently, Civil 3D doesn't do any of these automatically (I drew those all by hand) but, if you add the points to a surface, there are options available that will help you get a boundary that might be close to what you want.
I hate to barge in and ask a stupid question, but since creating a Surface automatically creates an outer boundary, why do you want another boundary?
As @BrianHailey said:
"...if you add the points to a surface, there are options available that will help you get a boundary that might be close to what you want."
Choosing different Maximum Triangle Lengths removes "spiderwebbing" and tightens up the outer boundary.
Dave
Dave Stoll
Las Vegas, Nevada
Lineworkshrinkwrap is the command. I think it was renamed sometime in the distant past. Too, as you noted, it does not work on points of any kind. Obviously I haven't used it. I just knew it was there. As a workaround I tried using a block consisting of a triangle as points and exploding them down to plain lines. The shrinkwrap command just creates polylines around each of the triangles instead of enveloping the entire cloud. So the shrinkwrap tool really isn't much use for this scenario, though I think it was originally created for this purpose.
So as Brian suggested, the best solution is to adjust the triangle parameters in the surface properties to get it close. Then extract the boundary and refine it from there. Or look into a custom tool per Antonio.