Show contours as curves instead of lines

[Srana123]

Attached is a picture of an area of my surface model. The black lines are polylines with an elevation I assigned. I added the polylines to my surface as contours and the cyan and dark blue lines showed up but they show up with straight lines instead of curves. Is there a way to show the contours as curves?

[user181]

Hi @Srana123,  When you are adding the contour data lower the Mid-ordinate distance, the lower the number the more accurate the contours will be.  Also check all the boxes in the Minimize flat areas by: section.

[KMercier_C3D]

When I am trying to digitize polylines into a surface I typically prefer to make them into constant elevations featurelines instead of using the add contours. The featurelines set of commands lets you add Elevation Points at an interval to help smooth the contour appearance.

In addition, you can take your contour/feature line that is closest to daylight and use a grading feature off of it to find the actual limits of the surface (which is super beneficial once you build a composite surface with existing and proposed that now match up at the limits of the proposed surface for catchment analysis). 

[Jeew-m]

Dear Friend,

In addition to the above comments try this as well.

https://jeewc3d.blogspot.com/2018/04/surface-tutorial-editing-surface-data_65.html

Thanks

[Anonymous]

Convert the polylines to feature lines then add the feature lines to the surface.  Feature lines handle curves better.

Also look into contour smoothing in the surface style and the smooth surface command in modify surface ribbon.