CARLSON SMOOTHING CONTOUR LINES

[sarcasm]well - this will be entertaining when Perry shows up.......[/sarcasm]

(SSSSTTTTTTRRRRREEEEETTTTCCCCCHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!)

I will usually choose the smoothing through the TRI command, then I will EDITCTR to really shave off the sharp edges. If you PEDIT and FIT, then you will get some smooth contours, but they may go haywire so beware. Additionally with most polylines, you should either turn on the Lintetype Generation through Properties or PEDIT L ON.

THANKS THE PEDIT AND FIT WERE THE COMMANDS I COULD NOT REMEMBER

fit is dangerous and does not always represent real world conditions

but most contours produced by engineering technicians don't match the real world either, so have at it.

> [sarcasm]well - this will be entertaining when Perry shows up.......[/sarcasm]
>
> (SSSSTTTTTTRRRRREEEEETTTTCCCCCHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!)

Personally, I let Carlson draw the lines with as little smoothing as possible, then draw my own the way the ground really looks and delete the machine-generated ones. But then again, I'm a Luddite.

> Personally, I let Carlson draw the lines with as little smoothing as possible, then draw my own the way the ground really looks and delete the machine-generated ones. But then again, I'm a Luddite.

I'm not quite that old-school, but it seems that I have to do at least some contour editing on almost every topo. Sometimes it's my fault for including a shot I shouldn't have, but often it's the software that throws in something goofy.

Until about a year ago I used Eagle Point, but that broke when I switched to Windows 7, and keeping my old XP machine running just isn't worth the hassle. I haven't actually replaced EP yet, but when I have to (next topo job!) I'll buy the Dotsoft DTM and quantities modules. I test-drove them a couple of months ago, and they appear to do everything I need at a very modest price.

No smoothing, never have. Get the surface right, it isn't needed.

nice, so how many shots per acre?

> nice, so how many shots per acre?

That depends on the acre. A 50' x 50' grid is typical. 100' x 100' is often plenty. It's the breaklines that are really critical.

The real idea is to make a surface file that accurately models the surface. If you have that the contours generated from the surface model don't need smoothing. More to the point, if you feel the need to smooth your contours that is a sign there is something wrong with your model. Fix the model.

Smoothing contours distorts them so that they do not represent the surface model data just to make them look good. And that is putting lipstick on a pig.

No smoothing. Hundreds of surface models in the last 15 years, not one has smoothed contours. Zero complaints (about contour appearance), plenty of compliments. In fact, two such compliments in the last 24 hours.

I somewhat agree with you. I don't like to "manually" smooth anything after the contouring, just in case I need to re-do it for some reason.

That said, I'm sure that some of my topo plans have looked a little angular at times, and could have done with a bit of smoothing.

I'm not much of a fan of the automatic stuff in the software packages either.

Especially line annotation. Of course I am not doing 1500 lot subdivisions, mostly Surveys with relatively few annotations. I just do it manually because then it looks the way I want it to look without fighting the software.