Topography into Inventor

[karthur1]

Struggling with doing something out of the ordinary here.  I need to show in my design the topography of the ground.  I have traced the contour lines in Autocad at the different elevations.  I thought that I could bring this into Inventor and use surfacing tools to patch it all together.  Problem is that when I try to use the patch tool, it fails.  I can't use the "PointLinker" because the data is not in a nice format that it likes. I am sort of stuck here.

There is alot of talk on other forums about using Revit or Civil 3D to create the topo surfaces, but I dont have either one of these packages.  Has anyone done anything like this in Inventor?

Thanks,

Kirk

[dgorsman]

Are you on a Suite or Collection license?  Those include Navisworks Simulate and/or Manage, which would be ideal for bringing disparate content together.

[karthur1]

Yes, I have the Inventor Suite.  I just don't have a model of the topography.  All I have is the Autocad contour lines.

I can do an overlay in inventor and show the contour lines.  I would like to get the topography int a 3D surface, so that I can see in my assembly model how the ground  interacts with my equipment.

Thanks.

[swalton]

Have you tried to make a loft using some or all the contours as rails? 

Did you clean up the contour sketches with Sketch Doctor? 

[karthur1]

Tried that.  No luck.

[johnsonshiue]

Hi Kirk,

I have seen customers doing it by using Boundary Patch. You could include those contour curves in 3D Sketch. Then create  BP surfaces by picking the curves.

Many thanks!

[kpyoung333]

No idea what you're trying to accomplish, but I've used freeform as a sheet and then raised/lowed points as a topography to known distances and then Thicken to get a difficult surface. Just throwing it out there but probably not what you're looking for...

[karthur1]

That's a different way of doing it, but it would take forever to get it even close to accurate. 

@johnsonshiue

Doing the BP  was my first attempt.  After I picked three of four of the contour lines, it would fail.  I thought it was probably because of the sharp turns of my contour lines.  If the BP wouldn't try to smooth out everything, it may work.

[kpyoung333]

Here's just messing around with loft and extrusion, what are you trying to accomplish? Helps if you have a defined area (the rectangle) to work in, otherwise it is abstract and super difficult.

[dgorsman]

Ahhhh - gotcha.  Getting a grade surface from contours is tricky.  The only procedures I can think of are more than a little complex.

The first requires generating points at regular intervals along each contour.  The spacing should be relatively small compared to the contour spacing.  Then the points are triangulated.  Heavy work but most of it could be automated (DIVIDE command, and there's some simple triangulation routines out there - I think Toolpac might have a free one).  Generates a proper TIN which can be useful.

The second generates an equal-sized grid of either quads or triangles.  Grid intervals should be small enough to get most contours.  Trace each vertical or horizontal gridline across the work area.  Use where it crosses each contour line to estimate the elevation of the vertex for all four (or eight) vertices of adjoining surfaces.  Not as accurate as above, requires either manual input or custom automation.  Automation is faster than triangulation.  Produces a very regular surface.