I have a surveyor supplied survey data in the form of an Autocad file. The terrain model is represented by 3DFace element.
The surveyor can't generate genio or LandXML of the terrain.
What is the easiest (and accurate) method of creating a terrain model from the 3DFace elements?
Can the 3DFaces be dropped to lines? Since you mention GENIO, I assume you are working with MX - is that the case?
Yes and Yes (MX V8i SS4).
My concern with dropping to lines is that (trying that several years ago) when triangulation is done on the dropped strings, triangles didn't form only along the strings. IE. other additional triangles were formed.
I have not seen that before. A dropped triangle should only have 3 lines with points at the vertices, so where are the extra triangles being formed?
Mark, I checked my records (it was back in 2005) but I don't have much detail. I didn't realize it was so many years back XM edition 8.9.2 or earlier. It's been a long time since I have had to import terrain models from CAD triangles I guess.
From memory the issue back then was slither triangles being formed between vertices (ie not along the edges of the original triangles)
Things have probably changed in MX since then. I''l try it fresh in the morning.Thanks for your comments.
the main issue when dropping 3dface is that you have each side of triangle twice. I would advise a Utilities>data cleanup before triangulation
Answer Verified By: Andrew Brown
Thanks guys. Success!
Tried it and it worked. Much improved on old MX.Maybe the cleanup (thanks jpin) made the difference.
Hopefully in future, I can continue to get LandXML or Genio files negating the need to do this manually.