Contour smoothing

[dusan.dimitrijevic.gaf]

Hi everyone,

I have a surface in Civil3D that was created from a point cloud.

As you can see in the attached picture, the contour lines aren't very smooth.

I've tried simplifying and smoothing the surface, but the results still aren't what I'm looking for.

Does anyone know the procedure to modify the surface so that the contours look more like the blue line I drew in?

P.S. I also have the .las file and can edit the point cloud in Recap if necessary to get better results.

Thanks!

[rl_jackson]

You'll need to simplify the surface, I generally reduce the data by about 80-90% on point clouds, just to obtain better contours. The issue is there's too much triangulation for a TIN model.

[Joe-Bouza]

Another option; extract the contours and MAPCLEAN.

[lim.wendy]

Hi Dusan,

Thanks for posting. 

If simplifying the surface doesn’t yield the results you need, could you provide more details about what you’ve tried and what issues you're encountering?

For additional guidance, you might find this help documentation on surface simplification useful.

Alternatively, as Joe suggested, you can use the MAPCLEAN function to simplify your surface further. This video tutorial provides a good overview of how to use MAPCLEAN effectively.

Let us know if you need further assistance or have additional questions!

[fcernst]

For a general simplified contour exhibit I like extracting the surface contours and using the Weed Vertices command .. you can quickly iterate .. and iterate.. and iterate…….through the length and angle settings to get a generalized  fit look you want for laypeople stakeholders.. without compromising the original LiDAR data. 

[dusan.dimitrijevic.gaf · Accepted solution]

Thanks, everyone, for your helpful suggestions!

@rl_jackson, This is a good solution. From my experience with this project, in order to keep the terrain representation good I need to first extract breaklines (like EOP, CL, etc.) to make sure these edges stay clear and don’t blend into the surrounding area.

@Joe-Bouza, mapclean seems like a good option. But I've noticed that when I use the weed polyline option in mapclean, it takes 5-6 tries to get the same result that I can get in one try with the weed command (as @fcernst suggested). It might be because the angle in mapclean is set up to 179°, while in the weed command, it’s up to 359°. Adding breaklines also really helps. If you have more tips for using mapclean, I’d appreciate it!

I also used quick select to remove very small contours.

In the end, I still had to manually adjust each contour, which can be a lot of work on bigger projects.

Big thank you again for everyone that helped!