In other DTM software, there are tools to allow you to select a dagonal leg of two adjacent triangles, formed between four points, and to flip the diagonal to the other two corner points.
I could have sworn that I read in an InRoads Readme that such a tool was now available in InRoads, but I cannot find any reference to such a tool.
I know I can edit breaklines to do this, but this tool is simple and quick. The same cannot be said about adding and possibly breaking up breaklines to accomplish the same thing.
Chuck,
The Surface> Edit Surface> Change Triangle Edge command is available in the currently released Bentley PowerCivil for North America product. That must have been the readme that you read. It is also in InRoads Group SELECTseries 1 that is not currently released.
Thanks,
Jason Smithey
Well, its good to know that I have not lost my mind.
Since we have two seats of PowerCivil, I should be able to run this version, right?
Charles (Chuck) Rheault CADD Manager
MDOT State Highway Administration
Adding some follow up information and questions...
We have two Power Civil licenses which I cannot get anything to see. So currently I'm editing triangles 15min. at a time.
What controls the preservation of these flipped triangles?
I see no breaklines being created or destroyed in this process. Will a simple Triangulate Surface command undo all the hard work?
I hope not. That would be a nightmare! [It's a madhouse! A madhouse!]
Also, this tool need an undo or some type of error checking. It is willing to swap verices that create crossing triangles and then, refuses to see the newly swapped line.
Don't get me wrong - InRoads has needed this tool since the early MDL version days, but some improvements are needed.
When I "flip" triangle edges I create a graphic file and change the one I need to edit. Then I import the new graphic triangles into a new surface. I will use a different symbology so i can do a quick visual check. Yes it can be time consuming but so is having to go back and fix your triangles several times if they are re-triangulated. I am using old versions so maybe that is way edits aren't saved? Or could be just the commands I was running.
A simlar issue happens when I delete triangles along the edge of surfaces in the concaved areas, re-triangulate and your deletions are back. That is unless you remember to create the boundary and import that.
I started flipping in a copied surface and displayed the before and after triangles in the same file with different colors. Then added new breaklines over the flipped edges.
Still, the argument against flipping triangles was always that the triangles are controlled by Delancy aor Delany or whatever, plus breaklines.
So I say , if a flipped face needs to break one breakline and create a new, better that it do that or warn us and let us say yay or nay.
I also found that a new breakline created to preserve a flipped face can effect surrounding triangles, causing nearby triagles to change - somtimes in undesirable ways.
In Land Desktop, apparently the 3D lines drawn in the file become part of the surface definition and must be kept to preserve flipped faces.Apparently there is no easy fix.