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Contour Battles

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surveyor_randy:
Just thought I'd share something with you guys.  And I won't win the debate here in this company.  The head of our survey department is a DIEHARD terramodel user and even though we have all decided to switch to Civil 3D, he still wants to generate contours in Terramodel and uses it as the benchmark for correct contouring.  If C3D generates a contour slightly off from the one that Terramodel generates, the C3D contour is considered wrong.

When we are taking shots every 50', I tried to explain to him that true contours will not be smooth with that sparse of a grid.  So he is having everyone take an extra step of generating contours in Terramodel and them importing them into C3D as elevated polylines which are then used to build a surface.  So, IMO, we are ending up with an inaccurate surface from which to design from.  He says that this survey department will not put out 'jagged' contours in a drawing.

Is there anything I can do in Civil 3D to make the contours appear smoother to appease him?  I imagine adding a whole boatload of interpolated points to the surface might smooth them out.  But to be honest, I cannot stand working in Terramodel and I strongly believe that Terramodel is generating bogus contours on sparse data.  But I won't win this debate since I'm not the boss.

Thoughts, opinions?

Jeff_M:
Have you tried any of the surface smoothing methods under Surface Edits?

http://www.civil3d.com/2007/01/surface-smoothing-simplified/

surveyor_randy:
Yep...  I saw those a few years back.  I will have to revisit the idea.  The argument that I get is that it is "just another step" whereas Terramodel will do it right (in their opinion) the first time.

I'm actually playing with the idea of having a true C3D generated surface, turn the contours off, and then just overlay the terramodel contours for the "visual appeal"....  at least the engineers will be getting an accurate surface and not something that has been toyed with to make it pretty to the eye.

mjfarrell:
I think that you need to experiment with your surface style(s) and the contour smoothing functions.
You might be surprised to discover that the C3D surface and contours can vary widely depending on these settings.

And or it's time to bring me down there to Reeducate that person. (and all others that will be using C3D)

Willie:
Maybe a bit of topic, but still relevant. 

The previous firm I work also used two software packages.  One to create designs and Autocad to create drawings.  It sucks working with more that one software package to create a design, or in your case, contours.  If you export, you loose all the object intelligence and end up with line, polylines and text etc.  And you waste a lot of time doing cosmetic editing on drawings.

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