Surface Triangle Volume with Shapes including Holes

Chris, what software and what version are you running? If it's InRoads SS2-ish, are you using Interior Boundaries?

It is InRoads SS2. This would be for an instance where the surface is completed and I wouldn't want to modify the surface anymore with interior boundaries but just to report cut/fill in different areas. I see how you can do this with microstation shapes in the triangle volume reporting tool but it looks like the shapes have to be single enclosed shapes and can't have holes in them. So if you had an area that had a sub-area in it (like a donut hole) and you wanted to report the donut and the hole separately, you'd have to use two shapes, one for the outside and one for the inside and then remember to subtract the inside from the outside after saving the report to excel in order to get the correct cut/fill for the donut shape.

It is InRoads SS2. This would be for an instance where the surface is completed and I wouldn't want to modify the surface anymore with interior boundaries but just to report cut/fill in different areas. I see how you can do this with microstation shapes in the triangle volume reporting tool but it looks like the shapes have to be single enclosed shapes and can't have holes in them. So if you had an area that had a sub-area in it (like a donut hole) and you wanted to report the donut and the hole separately, you'd have to use two shapes, one for the outside and one for the inside and then remember to subtract the inside from the outside after saving the report to excel in order to get the correct cut/fill for the donut shape.

Hmmm... I hear ya, but I wouldn't flinch at tossing in some temporary strategic Interior boundary shapes draped on the surface just to excluded an area from the volume.... to avoid doing it 'manually'. And with the donut example, have you tried placing a shape that represents the donut (inside and outside in one contiguous shape), and another representing the hole, and doing the triangle volume by selected shapes? I can't recall having tried creating shapes that trace back along themselves, but I can't think of any reason it wouldn't work. I know the shapes all have to be created, but that's a whole lot less challenging that calculating earthwork by hand without InRoads : )

Thanks Zen! Using a continuous shape and tracing out the "donut" like you mentioned (including tracing the internal lines back on top of each other) worked great. I would have thought the shape may have to have a bit of space in the area getting to the interior space, but it gave the correct result when it was doubled back on itself.

Sweet!!