A lot of my focus lately has been on surfaces. And of late I’ve been playing with the various surface editing tools. Before I get into it, there are 2 schools of thought on surfaces:
A. The surface from the surveyor is gospel and shall not be edited in any way, shape or form.
B. The surface has some oddities that are NOT in the field and they need to be fixed.
I tend to lean toward the latter. Editing surfaces is an art. You might be hitting your head against a wall trying to figure out why the surface does this when you swap edges or worse yet, when you can NOT swap an edge. Just like learning a new language, it does not happen overnight. I still struggle with the why’s and go to other more knowledgeable people for answers.
What I have found may or may not work for you, but it does work for me:
1. Do NOT delete lines inside your surface! You will create holes! Deleting lines is best for outside or outer perimeter editing.
2. Be CAREFUL when moving points! It might look good in the area that you are editing, but it may cause a snowball effect on the rest of your surface.
3. When deleting points (surface points, NOT survey points) to delete a group of points, press the C key for CROSSING.
4. If you have survey points that are not to be included in your surface, create a group of the points you want to include and then use that group.
I’ll have more later – I’m sure.
Talk Back