Recommendation for bringing in surface

[Anonymous]

Drawing A has point groups and a surface with edits. I recieve Drawing B
from the surveyors with a small area of Drawing A's surface updated. I need
to bring in the updated small surface with all it's edits, breaklines and
point group. I did a copyclip and paste and that worked but I have many
"update requirements" for the pasted surface 9see attached image). As long
as I don't update I have a workable modified surface, however if I do update
and rebuild the added surface becomes complicated. My question is what is
the preferred method for applying a modified small surface to the master
one? I'm going to assume that data shortcut is the best pratice for this.
Comments?

[Anonymous]

IMO The surveyors should be modifying the original surface, adding in
new data and updating breaklines, etc. The EG is their toy to play with.

If that's not feasible, then pasting their update in _should_ work,
assuming it has a good boundary and then matches up well with the rest
of your site. It still might get ugly with points etc.

HTH
JW

[ccoles]

I've used data shortcuts and the promotion command to greatly reduce the complexity of merged surfaces with great success. In your case, I'd recommend the following method to help keep a workable surface. I've used this method to update an original survey with as many as 10 updated areas.

Create a new surface. Paste in the original surface, then paste the updated surface using the 'paste surface' tool under >Definitions and >Edits. If the new surface looks good, create a shortcut for this compilation surface.

If more updates are expected, you can isolate this surface to avoid too many edits on one surface that may bog down your computer. Open a new file, and save-as a new name. Create a reference to the compiled surface. Then simply 'Promote' the surface. This promoted surface has no edits, and is like a clean slate. But, contains all the data required to be the compiled surface. I generally will rename this surface in 'Surface Properties' to help separate it from the older versions.

This method keeps the surfaces simple and reduces the amount of work required for the refreshing cycles of Civil 3D.