Tip: Contouring bug workaround

[RightAngle]

Here's my contribution to help repay all the good info I've gotten here.

In the field we didn't have the elevation yet, and so just started with our reference point on elevation 100. Later we ran the elevation in to the reference point so now we know a difference.

In the office we imported the points and did a draw/locate. Then we did a point translation only on the z axis to move the entire point set to the proper elevations. Then we contour and the contours are labeled as if the points were never translated vertically.

After an hour or two of thrashing around and looking for a solution we figured it out for ourselves: (1) Turn off all the layers except the point layers (2) Select and delete all the screen entities for the points (3) Turn the appropriate layers back on. (4) redo the draw/locate (5) Redo the contours. Now it should work.

It is possible that this isn't a contour bug at all, but rather a point translation bug.

[ColC]

I experienced the same problem just the other day. I had used F2F then a translation in z only. My recollection was I had two sets of point layers one with the new RL's and one with the old. I was forced to use a similar solution. I deleted the on screen data and then F2F. As it was at the beginning of the job the F2F was OK. It would have a bigger issue if I was further into the job.

[Jason]

I just followed the same steps you outlined that generated the bad contours and I got correct contours. I used Survey/Civil 2008 for AutoCAD. Did you notice if you elevation on your points that were drawn on the screen updated after you ran translate points? What version are you running? What is the build number in help-about Carlson?

[RightAngle]

Jason -

Sorry about the delayed reply. For some reason I didn't get an email notification of your reply.

I spent a couple hours trying to reproduce the problem myself and have been unable to do so. I tried it with "translate screen entities" both on and off. Trust me though, it did happen.

The only thing I can think of is that I had done a fair amount of work on the drawing before attempting the translation and contouring. I had drawn 3D polyline breaklines, and some building outlines that I used as exclusion polylines. I don't have time right now to make such an elaborate attempt to reproduce the problem. If it happens again I'll save a copy of the file to send to you.

To answer your questions:
The elevation on the points both on-screen and in the coordinate file did update after the translate. I distinctly recall that the on-screen coordinates did not make sense vs. the contour labels. And I do recall opening and checking the coordinate file.

I did not find a build number in Help About but maybe this will tell you what you need to know:
Carlson Survey 2006 (08/31/05).