Creating surface from surveyor indata workflow

[Ingrid91]

Hi,

I'm interested in learning a more efficient workflow than the one I'm currently using and am therefore looking to you smart folks out there 🙂

I receive indata from a surveyor in the form of 3D-polylines.

When creating surface I do these steps:

1. Change every 3D-polyline to a feature line

2. Add PI at a set increment

3. Explode feature lines until they're lines

4. Create surface from lines 

Since feature lines can only be manipulated one at a time, it's rather time consuming. But I don't know how to make the surface smooth between the PI's from the original data. There's no new z-values, only interpolation along the lines.

[AllenJessup]

Are the 3D Polylines breaklines or Contour lines?

[Ingrid91]

Since the 3D-polylines doesn't come from the surveyor in a finished surface they are "free". They are only 3D-polylines.

When I start adding information to create the surface I explode the 3D-polylines and add them under: Surface/Definition/Edits/Add lines.

[AllenJessup]

I'll rephrase. What do the 3D polylines represent. Contours or physical entities on the ground?

Contours don't need to be 3D polylines. But often they're done that way anyway.

[tcorey]

Your workflow needs a tweek or two.

You can take your 3d polylines and add them to the surface as breaklines. There may be no reason to convert to Feature Lines and there is definitely no reason to convert to lines. The extra points you say you're adding can be Supplementing factors when you add the 3d polylines as breaklines. Add them through the Prospector tab of Toolspace.

Right click on Breaklines and Add.

The type will be Standard. If you want, add a supplementing factor.