creating a proposed surface

[wbrustle]

The engineers at my company digitize proposed contours in a drawing and then they want me to create a surface out of the contours....the contours usually are 2 foot contours with areas that the software tends to translate based on the contours that I selected to create the surface.....I then usually need to create a profile, which does not look accurate compared to the contours, such as low spots etc...............my question is since the engineers at my work do not how to use the software, and I am not an engineer, making the profile look a certain way sometimes needs to be tweeked by me....any suggestions as to how to alter the proposed surface? Hopefully someone else can relate to this question and has any suggestions. I am pretty sure that feature lines cannot cross contours that I have selected to create the surface?

[Jay_B]

Have you seen and tried the suggestions on Brian Hailey's blog for creating surfaces from contours?

[Joe-Bouza]

they have to provide you with all the interstitial data for HP and LP that need to be added to the surface definition as point data. If they are digitzing across breaks (curbs, walls, et-al) that too needs to be defined.

If the profile looks like crap thats because the data they gave you is crap. You know what they say about putting lipstick on a pig, right? ....If they aren't going to have you design it, Demand more data.

[Joe-Bouza]

Not to mention swale threads and ridge lines, but I will. The fact is if you define all this digitizing is moot. I have my hands full with these type - they just wont let go. then I have to watch them update a surface. ouch! thats when the drag becomes evident. And to make matters worse they only want the surface for qty, so there are no pipe networks either.... I watched them take a loooooong time to update a structure table. Someday