Contours looks wrong in OpenRoads Designer vs. old InRoads

Hi

We have faced some issues with contours in OpenRoads Designer. We do not think it has something to do with how the surface is created because we have both tried to import a surface as LandXML and also created it by points directly in OpenRoads Designer.

In OpenRoads Designer it looks like this with many wrongly connected contours:

In InRoads the exact same area looks like this (which is just what I've expected):

Can anyone tell me if I have to change some parameters or what else to do, to make correct contours in OpenRoads Designer.

Thanks in advance.

Regards

Rune H. Christensen, LIFA

  • The triangulation that is created can vary, depending on the order that the points are input - so I would not expect to see the contours exactly the same when you created the terrain from LandXML etc. The other thing to ask is - what makes the contours from InRoads correct?

    One thing I change in OpenRoads Designer - I amend the Feature Symbology to stop the contours from being 'smoothed'. In the Element Template for terrains, I make Smoothing = None i.e. contours are straight lines between points rather than curved.



  • Hi Mark

    Thank you for response. I was not aware of that the order of the order of the points from input has something to do with the calculation of the triangulation and contours.

    The thing that makes the contours from the old InRoads looks right, is that they are not connected across each contour. In OpenRoads you see a lot of lines going out from each contour, which should not be possible. In InRoads you only see one linestring connected for each contour which in my eyes are more correct. But I know it can depend on the parameters from the calculation.

    I have attached examples with no smoothing but it's the same problem. Here it's from OpenRoads:

    And here from InRoads:

    Regards

    Rune H. Christensen

  • It is possible to get those strange lines - what does the contour do if there are (say) 4 points in a square that all have z=10. All 4 edges and the diagonal of the square are on the contour z=10 - which looks very strange (but is technically correct)



  • Hi Mark

    Sorry for late response, but here in July we tested a little bit more. And as you wrote the problem was that several Z-values was at the exact same level as the contours, eg. Z= 10.000. Besides that we saw that we only have two decimals in our LandXML triangulation. If we tried with three or fours decimals, it looked much better.

    Thank you for your response and feedback.

    Kind Regards

    Rune

    Answer Verified By: Mark Marnell