Topography

Source file: topography-group.htm

The Topography group tools enable you to draw lines that identify and highlight topographic detail on scans and surfaces.

Contours (Alt+K)

Create elevation contour lines on surfaces.

Toes and Crests

Create bench toe and crest lines .

Sections

Create section lines on surfaces at regular intervals.

Surface Boundaries (Alt+\)

Draw boundary edges of surfaces.

Elevation Profile

Draw the elevation profile of a line, such as a haul road centreline.

Join Points

Create a line joining points in a selection.

Contours

The Contours tool (Alt+K) allows you to create contours on surfaces, which are then saved into an edge network object.

  • To create contours, do the following:

    1. Select at least one surface from which to create contour lines.

    2. On the Create tab, in the Topography group, click Contours.


    3. Enter the Upper limit and Lower limit for the contour creation, or click on them in the view window.

    4. Select the Step major contours from checkbox and enter a datum value to generate contours from a level other than the zero RL. Clear to generate contours from the zero RL.

    5. Define the Interval and Colour for the major contours.

    6. Select the Label contours checkbox and define a Label size and Density of labels (ideally the same size as the interval) to add elevation labels to the major contours.

    7. Select the Minor contours checkbox to generate minor contour lines between the major contours. Specify a Minor interval and Colour.

    8. Select a container for the created contours object in the Destination field. By default, the contours are saved in the contours container.

Major and minor contours, with the major contours labelled.

Toes and Crests

The Toes and Crests tools allow you to draw breaklines lines on scans. You can do this can in two stages, as described below.

Expand for detail.

Sections

The Sections drop-down provides tools for creating sections that you can use to compare surfaces. Expand below for detail on each sectioning tool.

Surface Boundaries

The Surface Boundaries tool creates edge networks that define the boundaries of a surface.

  • To create a surface boundary:

    1. On the Create tab, in the Topography group, click Surface Boundaries. Alternatively, on the Query tab, in the Boundary group, click Surface Boundaries.


    2. With Merge boundaries into a single object either:
      • Select to include all loops in a single edge network.
      • Or

      • Clear to create the edge loops as separate objects.
    3. Click OK or Apply to finish.

Surface boundaries have been created as a single edge network (left) and as edge loops (right). Edges are represented in green and holes in the surface are represented in red.

Elevation Profile

The Elevation Profile tool unwraps a line so that all its points lie in a single vertical plane without changing Z values.

This is helpful, for example, for evaluating the elevation profile of a haul road. i.e. elevation against horizontal distance.

  • To create an elevation profile:

  1. Select the subject line , such as the centreline of a haul road.

  2. On the Create tab, in the Topography group, click Elevation Profile.

  3. The elevation profile line will be placed in the cad container and named unwrapped line of subject line name.

An unwrapped line (left), tiled and tied to the original line from which it was generated (right).

The same unwrapped line viewed from above (left), tiled and tied to the original line from which it was generated (right).

Join Points

The Join Points tool joins a selection of points to create a line following user-defined indexing.

This enables you to quickly and automatically create an edge chain based on existing data, instead of creating an edge chain manually.

Data used can consist of either single-point or multi-point objects. Expand below for details on each.

  • To join points using attributes:

  1. Select the objects with points to be joined in the project explorer.

  2. On the Create tab, in the Topography group, click Join Points.

  3. From the Index by drop-down, select the option that was used to create the attribute.

  4. Select the tag denoting points to be joined from the Using drop-down.

  5. Click OK or Apply.

All points in the selected object, with the chosen tag will be joined.