Topo lines too detailed!

[Patrick M]

Anyone have a good workflow for simplifying large/complex topography for quicker modeling? I don't know why surveyors think we would need contour points 1/2" apart, but it makes modeling a mesh TEDIOUS!

I have certainly used illustrator to simplify contour vectors before, but typically end up tracing down overlapping contours or looking for contours that are deviated from their original position too far to be accurate... Obviously I can adjust the magic wand precision, but that only works if there are a lot of curves; in this case all pLines are straight segments... I may be workin on this mesh for days 😞 [thats not even the full survey... I cropped it down to do it in sections, the pLines are so complex AC is glitching with all visible]

 

[gpowless]

This was probably the most complex I have done. 1:250 final scale

I received a .dxf from the surveyor and placed it on a storey well below the bottom storey then used it as a ghost storey for a 3d Site Plan storey (this is a template storey sitting below the walk-out footing storey) to create a 3d mesh using the boundaries of the outer most topo graphical elevation points. Then using the magic wand I was able to add contour lines using the polygon tool.

Using the 1st storey as 0 for the design and setting the reference level 1 to -100.00m elevation (it puts the real time elevation to 100m) and the building floor levels are referenced from 100m.

For the site mesh a site bench mark (could be a corner bar) I made adjustments to the reference level to correspond with that known elevation. (this takes some practice and some math)

Once the elevation point was made I made adjustments to each contour i.e. each contour was 0.5m above or below the next. Point elevations were then added using the mesh in line mode and added the calculated elevation. 

A final grading plan was created by duplicating the mesh, placing it on a different layer and adding additional spot elevations as necessary.

[Chris Grantham]

Woof, I hate this problem!  I have had some luck opening the dwg in Adobe illustrator and reducing the number of nodes in there.  It still is a clumsy and imperfect solution at best, but I suppose it is something.  Another option is to call your favorite civil engineer and have them take 20 minutes out of their day and import survey data in and reduce the number of nodes into something they might use?

[Patrick M]

XYZ files almost always come in with crippling high poly, if we can get them at all

[Chris Grantham]

I agree the XYZ import option is totally useless, and always smothers my computer. 

[jan_filipec]

Strange, I use it regularly with no problems, the import time depends simply on the amount of mesh points and with correct data it always succeeds. Of course the resulting mesh can easily be too complex for Archicad, but that also simply depends on the number of points and not on the way you create the mesh.

That's the reason I suggested blender-it can easily handle meshes orders of magnitude more complex than Archicad, optimize and export xyz data of the desired detail level.

[Chris Grantham]

I will give the blender option a shot and see how it works.  Something tells me i am going to have a ton of questions. ha!

[Chris Grantham]

Does Blender work on OSX?

[Jp1138]

Yes