This has been discussed before but without any efficient answer I am asking it again in a slightly different manner. We survey large irregular property for a local municipality that requires MicroStation. These sites always require additional topo work to be added after the initial surface is created. A typical request would involve updating the topo to include areas that have changed due to construction or simply expanding the original topo area.
Each time we add data to the existing surface we must RECREATE THE ENTIRE DTM AND RE-EDIT EVERY SINGLE TRIANGLE THAT WAS EDITED DURING THE ORIGINAL SURFACE CREATION. This process can take days to accomplish depending on the size of the site. Some sites are over 5 miles long.
What we need is the ability to add data to a surface without having to re-create it, similar to the the way Civil3d functions. A 30 minute surface addition in Civil3d can take days in Microstation. This is extremely frustrating and adds thousands of dollars and tons of wasted time to these projects. Just yesterday an area was uncovered and it was surveyed. The area consisted of less then 15 points which needed to be added to the existing surfafce. Simple, right? Hell no, we had to recreate the DTM and re-edit the triangles. It took 8 hours to complete what should of taken 15 minutes.
Please do not tell me to 'fix the survey data' or to make every triangle a breakline.. This has nothing to do with bad survey data. I have been creating surfaces for 25+years and each and every surface needs a detailed review and editing of triangles, basically just flipping faces so the surface is correct.
Charles (Chuck) Rheault CADD Manager
MDOT State Highway Administration
Yeah, you can sort of think of it that way. Keep in mind, if you drop a line in where the vertices are not already part of the surface, it will triangulate to those from the break line:
Before (yellow line about 15' above base ground):
After adding it to the surface as a soft break line:
I highlighted the actual break line generated.
This issue STILL EXISTS in OpenRoads Designer contrary to what the friendly Bentley rep told me over the phone. This is utter nonsense on an epic level. Days of time wasted editing the same triangles over and over and over again. I would love for someone to correct me and show us how Bentley allows triangle edits to actually HOLD.
When you flip a triangle edge, you are manually identifying where a breakline should be. The field crew failed to collect the breakline because they either weren't paying attention or, much more likely, it was too subtle for them to recognize. You should add the breakline to force more accurate triangle creation. If that causes nearby triangles to change undesirably, there were two (or more) breaklines missed and will need to be added in the office.
Ray, that is 100% inaccurate. If the crew misses data, it produces bad data and flipping triangles will not fix it. Triangle flipping is 100% necessary to produce an accurate surface unless you have a scanned surface with points on 1' spacing.
Just because the software places triangle in a certain location does not mean that is where they should be to accurately reflect the ground surface. The software is smart but its not that smart. Other software handles editing once, this one doesn't