Autodesk civil - import contours.

I think he's talking about aecc contour objects as in Land Desktop.

When you add your contours (polylines) as breaklines you will want to check the box that says "Supplementing distance" and give it a distance of 2 or 3 (This number depends on the radius of the arc/curve and how accurate you desire it to be. The smaller the number the more accurate.) This should keep your "arcs" looking more like... "arcs".

I tried the lowest of values and i still get the same result.

It's not that i cae so much about this file specifically but i want to be able to make the best out of surface data and i keep on practicing o this file that i'm using.

How can i manually edit the resulting contours and make them match the existing ones?

Sometimes if you tinker with swapping edges (flipping faces in Land Desktop) you can iron out a lot of the wrinkles. Other times you can delete lines, but I avoid that as much as possible. There are other times where you can toy with other settings like minimizing flat areas, but generally you can get it done simply by swapping edges.

In case you haven't experimented with that go to the Toolspace > Prospector tab > expand your surface data and right-click on Edit > swap edges. Be sure your triangle lines are turned on first.

Alternatively you could place points along your contours (there is a tool to do this at a given distance or per the vertices) and build the surface from those points.

is there a way to create points at every verticy on a set of contours? the tool seems to ask me to confirm each point by hand, but i need a set of point for the entire area.

alternatively, is there a way to transfer a surface from one drawing to another? when using "Master View" rather than "Active Drawing View" i can see the surface i have in one drawing, but i would like to transfer it to another drawing.

thanks.

In the create points toolbar click the little blue chevron to the right (looks like an arrow pointing down) to expand it. This will give you options where you can set elevations and descriptions to automatic. Then it won't prompt for every one as inserted.

To get a surface from one dwg to another you can either create a data shortcut and reference the original surface into the new dwg or you can right-click the surface in prospector > export to landxml, then in your new dwg go to file > import > landxml to bring that surface in.

We import contours from another package every day no problems they come in as plines.

You must make sure that your plines have a Z if there all 0.0 then you will get nothing we have created surfaces from other drawings by editing the z's of the plines use move 0,0,0 0,0,10 height = 10

Lastly you explode them all now the easy bit

Create a surface, go to definitions Autocad objects add lines make sure tick on use edges, surface created !

I will almost guarrantee that it will not match exactly but it will be close enough. The secret to a good model is to have the original data in basicly a grid type pattern you will get screwy contours if you have one pline with say only 2 pts joining to a pline with multiple pts.

If this is the case use divide and then definition add Autocad points as 2nd run this will introduce extra vertices.

We are talking projects with 2,000,000 pts which creates its own headaches.