it seems that opening any scan data or stl data in alias through windows 10 does something to the mesh that means that alias is unable to see the mesh as stitched object and so the surface from mesh tool does not work. I have found that opening the same data on an older operating system fixes the problem, but as all my pc's now run windows 10 it makes surfacing scan data much more frustrating. my idea would be to fix this bug. I see that report a bug has been removed from the help drop down so i guess this is the best way to report it?