You can edit and add data to a surface after you create it.
Surface data categories include:
- Boundaries. Polygons that define outer, hide, and show surface boundary types.
- Breaklines. Includes standard, proximity, non-destructive, and wall breaklines. You can define breaklines from objects in the drawing or import them from a file.
- Contours. Includes contour data that you can define from polyline objects.
- DEM files. Includes USGS Digital Elevation Model DEM files.
Note
To use SDTS files, first convert them into DEM files. For more information, see About DEM File Data.
- Drawing objects. Includes Line, Point, Block, Text, 3D Faces, and Polyfaces. Used for creating surface points from AutoCAD entities.
- Point files. Includes ASCII point files.
- Point groups. Includes previously defined point groups.
- Point survey queries. Dynamic references to the points that are included in survey queries. For more information, see Querying Survey Data.
- Figure survey queries. Dynamic references to the figures that are included in survey queries. For more information, see Querying Survey Data.
Tutorial Exercise: Creating and Adding Data to a Surface
Topics in this section
- Understanding the Surface Definition
A surface definition is a collection of a surface build, data, and edit properties, as well as a list of the operations that you have performed on the surface. The type of definition data items that a surface can have depends on the surface type.
- Boundaries
A boundary affects the visibility of the surface triangles inside it.
- Breaklines
The effects of breaklines:
- Contours
Use contour data to create or modify a surface.
- DEM Files
Use digital elevation model (DEM) files or SDTS files converted to a DEM format to import points into a surface.
- Adding Surface Point Data from AutoCAD Drawing Objects
Use AutoCAD objects such as 3D lines to add surface point data to the surface definition.
- Moving Blocks to Attribute Elevation
Move AutoCAD block objects with attributes (such as labels or tags) at their insertion point to the elevation of one of the block’s attribute objects.
- Moving Text to Elevation
Move AutoCAD text objects at their insertion point to the elevation of their numeric text values.
- Point Files
If you have point data files that you created either manually or by downloading a data collector, you can use the point data as surface data.
- Point Groups
Add point groups to a surface definition.
- Point Survey Queries
You can build a surface from a dynamic reference to the survey points that are included in a survey query.
- Figure Survey Queries
You can build a surface from a dynamic reference to the survey figures that are included in a survey query.
- Moving Blocks to a Surface Elevation
Use the Move Blocks to Surface command to manipulate reference object block data.
- Extracting Surface Data
You can extract AutoCAD primitive entities from an AutoCAD Civil 3D surface.