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Surface Paste with interior borders

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Message 1 of 6
eladkcem
3252 Views, 5 Replies

Surface Paste with interior borders

There are a lot of posts on surface pasting... but I can't seem to find a solution to this particular issue, so here goes...

 

I have one surface (surveyed pts) that I would like to paste onto another larger surface (say a LIDAR or GIS base). The extents of the small surface are entirely within the extents of the larger surface. The small surface does, however, have some interior areas without any data ('holes' if you will). In these areas, I want the paste operation to result in just the original base surface... but the paste operation assumes I want the new composite surface to also have a hole...

 

Screen shot illustrating attached with example surfaces. Is there a way to paste only the surface and not the holes?

 

Thanks

 

-d

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Message 2 of 6
sboon
in reply to: eladkcem

The short answer is no.  All of the data within the outer boundary of the surface to be pasted is removed from the destination surface.

 

There is however a workaround (In Civil3d there is always a workaround) Smiley Wink

 

Start by creating a new empty surface, and paste your Base surface into that.

Assuming that you have a polyline or some other figure that defines the hole in your Survey surface, apply that as the outer boundary of your new surface.

Create yet another new empty surface.  Paste into this your Base surface first, then your Survey surface, then your new Hole surface.

 

Steve
Expert Elite Alumnus
Message 3 of 6
eladkcem
in reply to: sboon

Thanks for the reply Sboon...

 

I"ll admit, I was anticipating there would be a workaround... ;o/   (like you said, there alway is one.. *sigh*)

 

Unfortunately, that workaround is going to be too tedious for the project that generated this problem. The projec surfaces cover a large area, have many interior irregularly shaped 'holes', and I'd have to manually trim/join all the various border lines each time the design changed.

 

Do you forsee any problems trying cropped surfaces? I'd hate to get really far into the task if there is some known issue..

I'd try carefully cropping the surface to be pasted into several smaller surfaces (each without an interior hole). These would then be updatable, and sequentiallly pasted...?

 

-d

Message 4 of 6
sboon
in reply to: eladkcem

The process that I've given you is dyanamic.  If you have a surface with the holes then all you would have to do is extract the interior boundaries from one surface and then apply them as outer and show boundaries to the other surface.  Everything should update and you're good to go.

Steve
Expert Elite Alumnus
Message 5 of 6
eladkcem
in reply to: sboon

Thanks Steve,

 

The surface pasting is easily updated, but what about the interior border extraction? These interior regions will move around as the design changes... (which would leave me with the task of figuring out which boundaries need to be updated/tweaked or re-extracted).

 

So far...  the cropped surface approach is actually working. I have three cropped surfaces that all live in the same file together.  I just have to remember to rebuild the snapshots. Pasting these three surfaces sequentially results in a composite surface that respects the 'holes' of the original surface I was trying to paste. (screen shot of actual project with cropped surface polygons attached)

 

This would be a handy trick for AutoCAD to internalize into the pasting algorithms? The paste surface command would have an option to 'respect holes' or not.

 

 

thanks again for your help. I think I've got a workable system now.

 

-d

Message 6 of 6
sboon
in reply to: eladkcem

If you've got a workable system that's great.

 

I would extract all of the boundaries at once, erase all of the outer and show boundaries from the second surface and then replace them all with the new polylines.

Steve
Expert Elite Alumnus

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