TIN creation work flow?

[drwilson]

I've worked through a surface with Carlson & I feel like I'm missing something.

I brought in my points & 3D polylines via F2F. Create boundaries. run triangulate & contour, select all my stuff. I run through a few interations to deal with crossing breaklines & then move on to triangulation surface manager & fine tune by swapping edges, etc.

First question is, Is there anyway to go back to triangulate & contour and add say, more points, without wiping out my tin edits?

also, I can't seem to find where I can look at the surface definition in terms of what points & boundaries and breaklines were used to create the surface.

[SurvTech31]

I believe you can add points to your surface using your Surface Manager, you don't have to go back to the triangulation & contour command. I don't think it would eliminate your previous changes if you do it this way, but I have not tested it.

Not sure if there is an easier or better way to know what has been used for the surface other than if you have a triangulation line going to the point/line, it was included. And if there is no line, not included. I would be interested to hear if there is a better method.

[drwilson]

Thanks, I'll run some tests & see if I can verify if what happens when I retriangulate.

In Land Desktop, you would go into the equivelent of the triangulation surface manager & you could see what point groups were used to create the surface. Then you would export the breaklines from the surface as 3D polylines into the drawing. I got used to that because it was a good way to difinatively tell exactly what the breaklines were that the surface was using.

You could aslo edit them & then update the tin from the modified breakline. The fact that it was imported from the surface, tagged it in some way with a connection back to the tin file.

I ran into this because I was asked to go into someone elses topo done in Carlson & I'm trying to figure out what he did. there is a top of wall where they shot the CL & noted a width. I think he made an interior exclusion boundry & just made the topo not go through there. I'm trying to go back and create a breakline from the original 3D poly from F2F...

so, cut to the chase, I'm trying to figure out what he did to create the tin up to this point from within Carlson.

[ColC]

It may help if you select create a 3D mesh .I think that will create the 3d polygon structure you mention. There is no ability to relate from the tin back to the original data other than overlaying the info on screen.

You may already be aware that adding a point in Tin is not adding a point in your dwg file. Once you have amended the tin in the surface manager any regeneration of Tri/cont will lose those changes. reconstructed the contours once changes to the tin have been made can be successfully done by Contour from Tin.

[drwilson]

Ok, so I guess it's a matter of working a little differently. Keep a drawing, maybe, for the purpose of building surfaces so you can keep the entities used to make the surface in it.

& then if you end up having to do additional topo after the fact, seperate surface & then merge the two?

[ColC]

There are many combinations you can achieve with the various surfaces functions. You will find the Triangulation Utilities is very good at merging adding surfaces etc. And there are many other goodies to explore.