Civil3d LandXML surface to Microstation Surface - Help

Could you 'drop' the Civil3D triangles to line strings, and then use the line strings to create a new surface - to ensure the triangles stay as C3D made them? 

"It really should be easy but Microstation surface editing and creation tools are the worst ever." I notice you edited this line out of your C3D forum post  when cross-posting :-) 

Message 13 in the C3D thread is what I meant. 

"we have tried this method and can get the tin lines to come in correctly but they are in a Terrain and not part of a surface. That sentence makes no sense to me as I am not the one doing the work" - copied from the C3D thread.

A terrain is a surface - are you actually trying to get a mesh, rather than a surface? If that is the case, you can convert the terrain to a mesh.

"It really should be easy but Microstation surface editing and creation tools are the worst ever." I notice you edited this line out of your C3D forum post  when cross-posting :-) 

Message 13 in the C3D thread is what I meant. 

"we have tried this method and can get the tin lines to come in correctly but they are in a Terrain and not part of a surface. That sentence makes no sense to me as I am not the one doing the work" - copied from the C3D thread.

A terrain is a surface - are you actually trying to get a mesh, rather than a surface? If that is the case, you can convert the terrain to a mesh.

Thanks Mark. Yes i did modify my post slightly. Its not personal, but having used Cad for 30 years and trying to figure out the surface functionality in Microstation is mind boggling. In Civil3d its easy, you need a point you add a point, you need a breakline you add a breakline, you need a boundary you add a boundary.

I think we're making some headway with the triangle faces but now our issue is the boundary.  The file is not holding the boundary so it is tinning all over the place. Any thoughts on that one?

Just to be pedantic - you have used AutoCAD for 30 years. MicroStation is CAD too! :-)

What 'vanilla' ACAD tool would you use to create the surface from the C3D triangles to include the boundary? If I was doing this, I would be using the terrain tools in OpenRoads Designer (for example) and would include the boundary in the terrain - not sure if plain MicroStation has that, as it is not a civil tool (nor is plain Acad).

We have run into some issues with InRoads SS4 ignoring a boundary when importing a Land XML surface. I'll be watching this in case the solution fits.

I know we can do cleanup after the file is imported, but it's frustrating to see a nice clean surface in Civil 3D, only to export it to XML, bring it into InRoads to see extra triangles all over the place. There may be something we can do in Civil 3D to generate a cleaner export, but I honestly don't know enough to have a clue what that might be. Any suggestions?

Good point Mark. In my world Cad is Autocad and all programs old and new that work within Cad.  Microstation only comes into play when we're forced to use it.  Its not a bad program but definitely not surveyor or topographic surface-editing friendly.

You are comparing apples to oranges. Compare AutoCAD to MicroStation, compare Civil 3D to Open Roads Designer.

If you opened your terrain object file in vanilla AutoCAD, it would be more limited than MicroStation. First, you'd need the Civil 3D Object Enabler but then, I do not believe it allows you to change the style assigned to the terrain object, so what you see is what you get.

In MicroStation, the terrain element is a native MicroStation element. They do require you to create and manipulate it outside of MicroStation, but once opened, you can change the Element Template settings that control its display. This is the equivalent of the terrain object styles.