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Contour Battles

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Dent Cermak:
I started out "hand drawing" contours. Generated by spot shots or off aerial photography. Initially , I then engraved them on a scribecoat with a sapphire tipped engraving tool. I have been drawing contours longer than most here have been drawing breath. If your Boss thinks terramodel produces "accurate" contours he is sadly mistaken. Smooth does not necessarily equate to accurate.
The trick is to learn how to edit your tin file until the contours are doing what they should and look smooth BEFORE applying any smoothing factors. You can do that in LDD and in Civil 3D and their smoothing routines "fit" the contours smoothly through the spot shots. Terramodel doesn't hold the points as well. It goes for looks (kinda like "fit" vs "spline").
The secret is being trainned on the software you are using and knowing how to fine tune the tin file. If you are guessing, you won't get it right.
There are not that many school trained cartographic drafters out there any more, but there are a lot of people pulling contours. Just because they look good does not make them more accurate. (Quick clue on if someone really knows contours.......do they know the definition of a depression contour and how to symbolise one properly? Do they know the symbol and how to create it? One or two programs do this, most ignore them because the programmers do not know about them. Programmers?PFFFFTTTT!! They came up with Major and Minor contours!! Bunch of yoyos!).

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