Checking corrupt LDD files?

[CyberAngel]

My co-worker is having a problem creating a profile. When he tries to sample a surface, he gets a message saying the DTM file is not there (sorry, don't have the exact wording). That seems to imply that there is no data for the surface. The Terrain Model Explorer, however, lists the surface and says it's OK.

First, has anyone had this problem before? Any ideas about how to fix it?

Second, is there any kind of utility to detect and/or fix problems with the project data files in LDD?

[rustysilo]

Without knowing the exact message it is a tad bit difficult to help here, however, if it were me I'd do two things to start:

1. Open Windows Explorer and go to the project in question. Find the dtm folder and make sure the data is in there.

2. Be sure that the alignment I was trying to do a profile for actually "runs through" the surface in question.

[Alan Cullen]

or, if it is small enough, rename it and post it here. I may be able to do it for you.

[CyberAngel]

Problem solved!

First, here is the original message:
Error - unable to open file project path\dtm\surfaces.txt for reading
Error - no surfaces defined
Problems in sampling terrain data

We looked in that folder. surfaces.txt was not there. As usual, we only had two surfaces (existing and proposed), so we checked in another project. The file contains only the names of the surfaces. After we copied that file back to the other project, everything was fine.

What happened to the file? No way to know. Why would Autodesk create such a klugey redundant system?

I don't like quick&dirty solutions like this, but when a deadline's coming up, I'll try anything.

[rustysilo]

That's how it is sometimes with Land. Sometimes errors like that occur due to a glitch. Other times it is user error. In the end it doesn't matter so long as you know how to fix it. :wink:
Just today I had a similar issue when I was attempting to do T'c calcs and it gave me a message that it couldn't find the project.dfm file. It was simply because that particular project was not created via the Land project manager. Instead it was created in Windows Explorer. Therefore some of those important files weren't created. Like you, I had to copy the file from another project and it was fixed.

That's another thing I like more about Civil 3D. All of the data is in the .dwg itself rather than spread out in several data folders in a project.