No, you said some of our best practices were stupid- like erasing TIN lines or some such.
I was not aware a link to the swamp was left out.
Not a 'best practice' that I was critiquing. The example come in the form of the Surface Editing command descriptions where it is suggested that the user should delete TIN lines from within a building area or a pond. This information is totally wrong practice. One should NEVER delete tin lines from the interior of a surface model. There are other means that do not damage the integrity of the surface model. As there will be and should be TIN lines defining the building footprint. Those faces simply must remain. In the case of a pond, one could debate a need to remove them, given that the surveyors had collected the pond bottom elevations. Otherwise how could one calculate the volume of fill required to fill in the pond? Given one could get the permits to do so. If you want to call a wrong practice 'stupid' O.K. by me.
And there was no link to The Swamp included. (Have you actually read the book that has your name on it??)
I didn't write that particular chapter, and I agree with you in theory about keeping the integrity of the surface intact. However, when the firms I work with come forward and ask me the question about building pads, and they want to remove the contours from within the footprint because their jurisdiction will not allow them to show contours through the building, I run through the usual options such as, add a featureline to represent finished floor so you have a true model. or try a mask or wipeout, etc etc. many of those solutions are just not terribly satisfying to clients and they would rather delete the TIN lines.
So while deleting TIN lines may not be the best possible solution, it is indeed a typical use in practice for the delete TIN lines option.
Also note that that the offensive "stupid practice" as you say is mentioned in one small line on page 140 as an example of why you might use the delete line tool. It isn't a full blown sidebar highlighting this as a must-do technique.
While we all wish everyone was fully leveraging their 3D tools, there are still plenty of people who need to figure out real ways to get their work done.
The book is taken from us and goes through about four levels of editing. We don't even get to see where the images wind up until the very end. The first time I had access to the entire book was when mine was delivered to me in early October- two weeks after the birth of my son. I wrote about 400 pages of it, so I've read those over and over and over again over the past 8 months. The rest of the book- I am still reading it. I am on page 323. It's pretty hard to hold a 800 page book while nursing a newborn and taking care of a 3 year old, but I'll get there.
