How to create a boundary outline that passes through a collection of points.

Background

In the production of planning drawings, it is sometimes necessary to define the site boundary from a collection of survey points in a design. So how do you produce a boundary by joining the outline points.

Steps to Accomplish

Option 1 By placing a SmartLine

1. Enable AccuSnap
2. Select the ' Place Smart Line ' tool and simply select the points to form the outline boundary

Option 2 Using Create Complex Chain / Shape

1. Enable AccuSnap
2. Select the ' Create Complex Chain ' or 'Create Complex Shape ' tool (Tool setting Method:Manual) and simply select the points in order to form the outline boundary. It may be that you can use the automatic option (Tool setting' Method:Automatic | Maximum Gap:set as appropriate) depending on dataset.

Whilst these two approaches may be OK for a simple boundary with few points it can become tedious and time consuming for larger datasets. Another approach could be to generate a surface / mesh from the points and extract the boundary.

Option 3 Using the Mesh tools

1. If a 2d File - Use the File > Export > 3D (Mesh tools require a 3D file)
2. Select all the Point elements using the ' Element Selection ' tool that form the required boundary.
3. Use the 'Mesh From Points' tool to generate a surface mesh.
4. If required modify the surface mesh removing unwanted triangles
5. Extract the outline boundary of the surface mesh using the ' Extract Boundary ' tool. (Tool settings Output As:Line Strings | Extract:Boundary)

6. Delete the surface mesh if not required leaving the boundary

See also

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