Mesh over site plan

[Tom Krowka]

Need to create a site mesh on a plan that has quite a bit a vertical of change on a five acre piece of property. What is the most effiecient way to do this. Am not interested in purchasing Architerra.

[Brett Brown]

Tom wrote:
Would that be "quick tip 2006#2, Stamping meshes".

Tom, the tip sheet is 31/5/2007 "Site Modeling" , could be helpful in explaining the process.

[rocorona]

Karl wrote:
... Notice that the major contours (red) are broken to display the elevation text inline. [...]

Is this what other people in the US see as well? I've assumed this is how all US Civils are trained...but maybe it is a local thing...

Only when representing a "small" piece of land, the lines are continuous, with the numbers written only on one or both ends. For large maps, here too the numbers are in some points (one or more, depending on the drawing size) inside the major lines.

And yes, I fully agree that the points wisely chosen by the user are far more efficient than any automatic procedure!

[Anonymous]

Karl wrote:
I see Roberto's Italian survey had continuous contour lines as well... so I'm posting what I have found to be typical, at least in the mountain west of the US. Notice that the major contours (red) are broken to display the elevation text inline. This is not a masking thing. There really is no line there - so you have to recreate a continuous contour that spans the text to get the mesh ridge entered properly.

Is this what other people in the US see as well? I've assumed this is how all US Civils are trained...but maybe it is a local thing...

Cheers,
Karl

Yup, the broken main contours seems to be typical practice in the US. Sometimes I just punt and leave them broken. It means more spacebar clicks and elevation adjustments but that's often easier than tracing over it all. But then some of the DWGs are thousands of tiny line segments and then there's no choice but to trace. All depends on the situation.

[Link]

I've found that usually you can just insert a line to bridge the gap(s) and then magic wand the contour quite successfully. But sometimes even the individual lines that make up the contour can overlap by a tiny amount making the whole process very frustrating indeed.

it would be nice to understand why that happens.

Cheers,
Link.

[David Maudlin]

Matthew wrote:
Yup, the broken main contours seems to be typical practice in the US. Sometimes I just punt and leave them broken. It means more spacebar clicks and elevation adjustments but that's often easier than tracing over it all. But then some of the DWGs are thousands of tiny line segments and then there's no choice but to trace. All depends on the situation.

Link wrote:
But sometimes even the individual lines that make up the contour can overlap by a tiny amount making the whole process very frustrating indeed.

Is it possible to select all the lines in one contour and use the Intersect command to have them all join properly? Just a thought.

David

[Anonymous]

i usually just open the survey in auto cad. remove everything i dont need, keeping only the boundary and the contours. then make sure the contours are all continuous (removing the elevation text etc...) and triming them to the boundary.
from that i make my mesh in the steps from my 1st reply

[Link]

David wrote:
Is it possible to select all the lines in one contour and use the Intersect command to have them all join properly? Just a thought.

That's a good thought David - can't say I've tried it, but it should work for most cases I would say.

GeNOS wrote:
i usually just open the survey in auto cad.

Why do in AutoCAD what you can do in ArchiCAD? Seems like an antiquated approach to me.

Cheers,
Link.

[Anonymous]

the survey is an autocad drawings.. autocad has better 2d tools to get it done quicker. i find the 2d side of archicad pitiful.. but i have only been using it for 4-5 months, so maybe im missing something

[Karl Ottenstein]

Link wrote:

David wrote:
Is it possible to select all the lines in one contour and use the Intersect command to have them all join properly? Just a thought.

That's a good thought David - can't say I've tried it, but it should work for most cases I would say.

Well, maybe if it was easier to select the contour lines than in the files I get.

See attached screenshot. Arrows point to the inline elevations of a single contour and the grouping dots are a few of the random line segments that I selected. If the dwg converter could magically join the hundreds of short segments into a single polyline, then David's idea might work... but just too much work here.

Karl

[Anonymous]

Karl wrote:
Notice that the major contours (red) are broken to display the elevation text inline. This is not a masking thing. There really is no line there - so you have to recreate a continuous contour that spans the text to get the mesh ridge entered properly.

I used to fill in the gaps, but more recently, I've found that leaving the gap there and having two seperate non-continuous contour lines made no depreciable difference.