DEM to GDL Mesh

[Anonymous]

Has anyone ever been able to import the DEM coords. into a GDL Mesh. I think AC would be a good program to add referenced objects to DEM's
Thanks

[Frank Beister]

Do you have any source of the data format of DEM files? Sounds to be possible to import it with VERT/EDGE and PGON.

[Anonymous]

DEMs consist of a sampled array of elevations for a number of ground positions at regularly spaced intervals(usually 30m). So inserting the z values into a zy grid of 30m spacing should do it

There are DEM to VRML converters, so I was wondering about DEM to GDL possibilities

[Frank Beister]

OK, but is there a description how the values come along in a DEM-file? Is it binary or text, XML or a datbase type? Is it an open format or do one has to pay license fees to use it?

[Anonymous]

well it is text based numbers cause one can open it up in Win32Pad, but there is a header part though not a full row. The values are separated by 2 spaces.
There are DEM to XYZ converters as well.
Bryce 5 can open and save DEMs, but it defaults to a square grid with "0" value skirts outside of the DEM values

AccuTrans3d can open and save DEMs to dozens of formats. Maybe I will try that and merge a DXF into AC9 and see how that works and if I can convert it to GDL there.

Thanks for taking an interest

[Frank Beister]

Can you send me one small DEM-file? Just for having a look in it. You can read text files by a GDL script. So you should import it directly with all advantages as suppressing each segmenting line or adding HOTLINEs.

[Anonymous]

It looks like you've piqued Frank's interest. Please send him the DEM file so we can all benefit from his curiosity.

BTW; Frank thank you for all your considerable contributions here. You are a great asset to our community.

[Djordje]

crag_dolomite wrote:
There are DEM to XYZ converters as well.

ArchiTerra reads XYZ

[Frank Beister]

@Matthew
Thanks for the flowers.

@Djordje
Good news. I am on the way to get familar with the CiGraph addons, but didn't work with ArchiTerra yet.

@Craig
Thanks for the files, which are quiet large. The header with all information is in XML, tha raw coordinates in ASCII, thats right and you can open these files out of GDL. Both, XML and TXT. But this makes it not easier. The header offers so much information about the data, which seems to be necessary, that I don't see to write a converter by a short and curious idea and quick and dirty script.

[Anonymous]

Thank you all for your efforts

Djordje, I have no idea how much Archi Terra costs, but it looks like a useful tool.

Frank, here is a link to some translaters, some of which may have some code to go along with them
http://software.geocomm.com/translators/dem/